JADE AND TEAL ARE NOT EMERALD!

I'm in love with most shades of green, but the the bluish greens are the ones that get most of my attention. The yellowish greens aren't a good color for me but when looking into the color green, you can't leave them out. When I decided to start focusing on the color green, I found out there are so many shades. First you have your nature shades: asparagus, dark, fern, forest, hooker, jungle, laural, light, mantis, moss, myrtle, pale, pine, sap, tea and teal (there are probably bunches more). Then you have the other greens: Army, bottle, bright, Brunswick, Cal Poly Pomona, celadon, Dartmouth, emerald, feldgrau (field grey) , green-yellow, Harlequin, hunter, India, Islamic, jade, kelly, midnight, MSU, neon, North Texas, office, Pakistan, Paris, Persian, rifle, Sacramento State, sea, UP Forest. (Again, I'm sure there are more)

Before I became aware of anything honoring the month of my birth with the gemstone, emerald, I knew about the Emerald City in the movie The Wizard of Oz. I must admit I never read the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank  Baum. In the book, everything in the city is emerald green. In reality, everything in the city is a normal color but glasses worn by the residents are tinted with emerald green. Thanks Wikipedia because I never knew that! Now I feel like I've cheated my kids out of the full story of The Wizard of Oz! The first recorded use of the word emerald as the name of a color in English was in 1598.

Now I knew Ireland was referred to as the Emerald Isle but I didn't know Seattle Washington is sometimes called the Emerald City because the rain keeps the vegetation lush. I never heard of the Emerald Buddha which is okay because the figurine is actually jade. Speaking of jade (jade green), in the Chinese culture, you give something made of jade to express love. Jade unlike emerald is usually found in the opaque color. The color teal is a medium blue green that was used as the background color in the post-2004 redesigned version of the United States $100.00 bill.

While I'm at it, the green used as the green light of a stop light is made up of a blue lens on a yellow light for the benefit of people who have red-green color blindness. Bet you didn't know that!

I hope I didn't bore you with my newly acquired knowledge of the color green but there are just some things we need to know!!! I'm off now to buy my kids a copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for Christmas. They need to know the truth about the Emerald City!  Have a generously green week!

pic provided by wikipedia