Shades of green or Hades of green?

The unidentified bush on the roadside south of our property started blossoming sometime in the last 24 hours. It hadn't yet started yesterday around mid-day. When we drove past again this morning about 9:30, there were a number of flower buds that had opened. We'll try to get some better pictures with the DSLR in the next day or so, but the roadside blooms are growing in the middle of a short but very narrow stretch of gravel road, so we need to figure out where, if at all, we can park within a safe walking distance.

April 21, 2016 --> May 7, 2018

Photo by J. Harrington

Some years ago, we discovered Simon Jennings' Artist's Little Book of Color. It informs us that "Green is the largest color family discernible to the human eye. Prior to the standardization of pigment nomenclature many names were used to describe hues of green.Some of the following names are still in current use, while many have now disappeared." The "Little Book" goes on to list 35 or 40 hues of green, followed, several pages later, by a separate listing of a dozen "green tints," and then an entirely different section on "Terra Verte or Green Earth,"which adds more than a dozen additional hues of green.

green palette from Ingrid Sundberg's Color Thesaurus

Much has been written over the years about the relationship between/among names or words and human perception. Our species ability to discern something is claimed to be affected by whether or not we have a name or word for what we're looking at, hearing, tasting, touching.... (We have now started to wonder how that relates to the color perceptions non-human creatures have of the world about them. ) Computers attend to color using hexadecimal triplet codes. Since we Americans have yet to accede to using the metric system, and describing colors in red (#FF0000), lime green (#00FF00), and blue (#0000FF0 variants lacks a lyricism. Now we've started to wonder whether a hexadecimal code is sufficiently equivalent to a name or word to affect our perception. Sigh. We thought this would be a simple exploration of the shades of green and maybe a little on the symbolism associated with the color(s) green. Remember the saying about the first thing to do when you find yourself in a deep hole? "Stop digging!" We'll join you again tomorrow. For now we'll just hope you're green with envy!

Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight

By Yvor Winters

Reptilian green the wrinkled throat,   

Green as a bough of yew the beard;   

He bent his head, and so I smote;   

Then for a thought my vision cleared.

The head dropped clean; he rose and walked;

He fixed his fingers in the hair;

The head was unabashed and talked;   

I understood what I must dare.

His flesh, cut down, arose and grew.   

He bade me wait the season’s round,   

And then, when he had strength anew,   

To meet him on his native ground.

The year declined; and in his keep   

I passed in joy a thriving yule;   

And whether waking or in sleep,   

I lived in riot like a fool.

He beat the woods to bring me meat.   

His lady, like a forest vine,

Grew in my arms; the growth was sweet;   

And yet what thoughtless force was mine!

By practice and conviction formed,   

With ancient stubbornness ingrained,   

Although her body clung and swarmed,   

My own identity remained.

Her beauty, lithe, unholy, pure,   

Took shapes that I had never known;   

And had I once been insecure,

Had grafted laurel in my bone.

And then, since I had kept the trust,   

Had loved the lady, yet was true,   

The knight withheld his giant thrust   

And let me go with what I knew.

I left the green bark and the shade,   

Where growth was rapid, thick, and still;   

I found a road that men had made   

And rested on a drying hill.

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