The Kingdom of Light

In my last post, I wrote about what green means to me, but I left out several things and glossed over others. I didn’t mention that green connotes jealousy (and envy). I don’t like to be reminded of the times that I was green with jealousy, because I’d rather forget that feeling of being jilted, of not being good enough. It’s interesting that green, which has so many positive meanings, is also used for this most destructive of emotions. I’m thinking this may be simply because in medieval times, an excess of bile (which is greenish and tastes bitter, as anyone who has vomited violently knows) was associated with envy. 

But, outside of our English-speaking European neighborhoods, the association of green with envy doesn’t always hold. It has been reported that in some countries, other colors are used. 

See: Readers reply: why is envy green? Is it the same in other cultures?

So it seems that when the color green is used because it is found in nature, then it is a good thing - right as rain, green as grass. But if it is associated with bile, which is something that’s not a good and natural color to appear in human skin, then it is a bad thing.

Another revelation for me was the nature of the color teal. I’ve discovered that the age-old debate about whether teal is blue or green can be resolved by realizing it is defined as half green and half blue!

Green and red are actually on opposite sides of yellow in the light spectrum. See graphic below, from NASA's Visible Light Science Page 

I think of the yellow as the Kingdom of Light, or the Kingdom of pure energy. The red on one side is the Kingdom of animals - living creatures with red blood, powered by the element iron, flowing through their veins, that captures the Oxygen they need to stay alive. On the other side is the Kingdom of Plants - living creatures that use the magic of chlorophyll, powered by the element Magnesium, which captures light energy to turn water and carbon dioxide into food through photosynthesis, giving the plant energy to grow and survive.

The fascinating thing to me is that chlorophyll in leaves is green because it absorbs blue and red light and reflects green light. In a sense, then, green things aren’t “green” inside. They’re lovers of red and blue.

One big difference is that fish red blood cells have nuclei, while mammalian blood cells do not. I wonder why?

The answer is that mammals lost their red blood cell nuclei during evolution to gain major advantages. Fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds retain nucleated red blood cells, but mammals evolved a specialized process that pushes the nucleus out as the cell matures. This change makes our mammalian blood much better at supplying the high-energy needs of our mammalian bodies.

One last "fact or fiction" moment! The reason the sea looks blue is different from the reason the sky looks blue. Check it out.  The sea looks blue due to the selective absorption of red and green light by molecules in ocean water, combined with scattering within the liquid itself, not from the air above or from a reflection of the sky. This is why it still looks blue even on a cloudy, gray day.

Resource: "Why is the ocean blue?" (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution website)