Emeralds

Nature 3 Minutes

The color green isn’t for everyone, but emeralds are in a class of their own. The stone’s hue is unmatched, making it one of the most sought-after gemstones on the market. Emerald has consistently surpassed other green gems like peridot and tourmaline with its lush blueish-green tones. But what’s an emerald without some fanciful history and lore? These quick and to-the-point emerald facts will help enliven your passion for this rare specimen, regardless of what you think about its coloring. 

Emerald Know-How

Emerald is one of the four recognized precious gemstones. The others are ruby, sapphire, and diamond.

Emerald is the birthstone of May and is the traditional gift for the 20th, 35th and 55th wedding anniversary in the US. 

Emerald is made from beryl just like the gemstone aquamarine.

Emerald gets its green coloring from trace amounts of chromium and/or vanadium.

A 1-carat emerald appears larger than a 1-carat diamond because of its lower density.

Emerald measures between 7.5 to 8 on the Mohs Scale of Hardness. Though they are durable stones, emeralds are susceptible to chipping and cracking. This makes emeralds more expensive to set into jewelry due to the risk involved. 

Colombia yields the largest amount of emeralds, contributing to more than 50 percent of all emerald production worldwide.

Emerald History

The oldest emeralds are about 2.97 billion years old.

The first known emeralds were mined in Egypt around 1500 BC.

One of Cleopatra’s favorite stones was emerald, and her passion for the stone was well documented.

Emeralds were discovered in South America in the 16th century by the Spanish. They were used by the Incas well before this discovery.

The Spanish traded emeralds across Europe and Asia for precious metals, which opened up the emerald trade to the rest of the world. 

Emeralds were first discovered in North America in the Yukon Territory in 1997, though large emerald deposits in the United States and further north are very rare. 

Synthetic sapphire and ruby were created in 1907, but synthetic emeralds were not created until 1935 when American chemist Carroll Chatham successfully grew his first 1-carat Chatham emerald. This stone is now on display at the Smithsonian Institute. 

Emerald Symbolism and Lore

According to ancient folklore, putting an emerald under your tongue would help one see into the future.Emeralds were thought to guard against memory loss and enhance intuition. Want to be sure what your lover is saying is real? Emerald was believed to act as a type of truth potion, helping decipher whether the lover’s vows were true or false. The soft, calming color of the emerald helped early lapidaries rest their eyes after an extended period of concentration. Today, emerald is still thought to relax and relieve eye strain. 

 Emerald Value

Top-quality emeralds can be worth more than diamonds on a per-carat basis.

Most emeralds have some type of inclusion or imperfection, and emeralds without imperfections or inclusions are very rare. Instead of the term imperfection, dealers like to reference emerald inclusions as an internal jardin (“garden” in French). 

Color, clarity, cut, and carat weight are four factors used to determine the value of an emerald. The most important of these four is color. The best color is vivid green or blueish-green with even saturation and no color zoning. 

Valuable, high-quality emeralds are very transparent and aren’t too dark or too light. Green beryl that is too light in color may not even be considered emerald by some gemologists. 

A gemologist judges a diamond’s clarity grade by using a 10x loupe. The clarity of an emerald is often assessed with the naked eye. 

An emerald pendant necklace owned by Elizabeth Taylor sold for $6.5 million in 2011, breaking down to about $280,000 paid per carat.

The Duke of Devonshire Emerald is one of the largest uncut emeralds weighing 1,383.93 carats.

Tips

Due to the inclusions within an emerald, it is not wise to clean these gems in an ultrasonic cleaner. Instead, clean gently by hand using warm water. 

Most emeralds are usually treated by filling the emerald with oil to fill in the cracks and help prevent unintentional chipping or cracking. You can coat emeralds with baby oil as an extra care precaution to help the stone from becoming overly brittle. 

Source: Spruce Crafts

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Published by pat frederick

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164 thoughts on “Emeralds”

  1. I’ve always been curious when I see the birds wiping their beaks on the trellis or a branch after eating so I looked it up.

    ENTIRE ARTICLE: “If you’ve spent much time observing birds—you clicked on this nerdy story, so that feels like a safe bet—you probably have noticed them wiping their bills on a tree branch or fencepost, or whatever else they’re perched on. And you might have wondered: What’s going on there?

    A few things, it turns out. Bill-wiping is not the hottest topic in ornithology, but curiosity has drawn the occasional researcher to the behavior over the years. Although they haven’t arrived at a definite, universal explanation, we can summarize their reports on the role of bill-wiping this way: It definitely acts like a napkin, probably as a file, and maybe even as a cologne spritzer.

    The first scientific paper to focus on the behavior, it seems, was a 1970 review by ornithologist George A. Clark, Jr. “Bill-wiping typically involves rapid withdrawal of the side of the beak from base to tip closely adjacent to a foreign surface such as a branch or the ground,” he wrote. “I have seen passerines wipe on rope clothesline, fence wire, the edge of a metal birdbath, and the rim of a metal incinerator.” While it often involves just a few swipes here and there, Clark cited one report of a finch wiping its beak 90 times in a few minutes. His research turned up more than 90 species known to engage in the activity, and he surmised that all birds do it, with the possible exceptions of hummingbirds and waterfowl.

    The napkin principle—that birds wipe their bills primarily to clean them—is generally agreed upon, based on logic and observation. “As widely noted, birds frequently bill-wipe after eating messy foods such as suet, fruits, or juicy insects,” Clark wrote. It just makes sense; you know how it is when you’re eating juicy insects. To make sure, though, researchers in the U.K. did an experiment and confirmed in a 1992 study that European Starlings wiped their bills more often after eating sticky food than dry food.

    A larger goal of that study, however, was to test the file hypothesis—the idea that birds wipe their bills in part to shape them. It was prompted by a student who saw a starling wipe its bill and asked lead researcher Innes Cuthill the reason for the behavior. Cuthill didn’t know the answer, so he searched a library and found that no one had studied the question in a lab. “I reasoned it was probably like cats sharpening their claws, or rodents chewing to keep their teeth down, so that led to the experiment,” Cuthill, an ecologist at the University of Bristol, said in an email.

    Like fingernails or hair, the outer portion of a bird’s beak is made of the protein keratin and grows nonstop. Foraging and feeding wears this outer layer, giving the bill its shape. Starlings and other species, Cuthill and colleagues noted, shift their diets at different times of year, eating mainly bugs and worms during breeding, but switching to lots of fruits and seeds in fall and winter. They wondered if bill-wiping might help birds hone their beaks into shapes that work best for grabbing whatever type of food they’re focused on.

    The answer, their findings suggest, is yes. Wiping had a significant impact on bill length and shape, they found. Birds that were assigned to smooth perches wiped their beaks more often than those with rough ones, apparently compensating for the lack of abrasion. And birds with rough perches to rub against turned out to be faster at picking up food than those with smooth ones. “This lends support to the idea that wiping frequency may be strategically adjusted to tune bill shape to current diet,” the team wrote.

    Along with cleaning and honing, scientists have noticed that bill-wiping seems to happen a lot in social interactions between birds. Back in 1970, Clark’s paper characterized it in those situations as probably a “displacement activity.” That’s a term for behavior like fidgeting or head-scratching that arises unconsciously when you’re frustrated or conflicted, and it’s a concept that’s lost currency among scientists. “We don’t really accept those kinds of explanations for animal behavior anymore,” says Danielle Whittaker, an evolutionary biologist at Michigan State University. “We look to see if there’s anything functional.”

    Which brings us to the cologne hypothesis. Whittaker is fascinated by smells and how they play into animal reproduction. Her research has shown that preen oil, which birds produce through a gland and use to maintain and waterproof their feathers, contains odors and chemical signals that play a role in mate choice. So when she became aware of bill-wiping, Whittaker wondered if birds might be slathering preen oil on nearby surfaces to release those smells and lure a mate.

    To find out, she conducted what she calls “a fun little experiment” with Dark-eyed Juncos in Grand Teton National Park. It involved placing a caged junco—sometimes a male, sometimes a female—in the middle of a wild junco’s range, paired accordingly with a recording of a female’s come-hither trill or a male’s courtship or territorial songs. Whittaker and team videotaped the wild bird so they could count its bill-wiping, and, in 2014, reported evidence that the behavior plays a part in junco courtship. “I didn’t see it very often in response to another male,” she says, “but I did see it very reliably in response to a female.”

    These findings suggest that, routine and subtle as it seems, bill-wiping may have a meaningful role in the most essential aspects of avian life. Like pretty much everything about birds, its fascination deepens the more you learn.”

    Liked by 2 people

        1. we used to put peanuts (in their shells) on the deck railing for the blue jays in winter,,,then that started a war between them and the squirrels.

          Liked by 1 person

  2. which, even if passes the senate, ultra maggot will veto

    Troublemaker10
    May 11, 2023 4:05 pm

    Speaker Kevin McCarthy: “Today we will pass on the floor, the strongest border security bill this country has ever seen.”

    Speaker Kevin McCarthy: “Today we will pass on the floor, the strongest border security bill this country has ever seen.” pic.twitter.com/chmqNv0mlD

    — Real Mac Report (@RealMacReport) May 11, 2023

    Liked by 1 person

  3. so the witch is considering ANOTHER lawsuit–I say he turn the tables and counter sue her for DEFAMATION for accusing him of rape–he is not a rapist–the jury came to that conclusion.
    FTA
    E. Jean Carroll is weighing whether to file a new defamation lawsuit against former President Donald J. Trump in the wake of his diatribe against her during a CNN town hall Wednesday night, when he said her claim of a decades-old sexual assault was “fake” and a “made-up story,” her lawyer said on Thursday.

    Mr. Trump’s comments on CNN came one day after a federal jury in Manhattan awarded Ms. Carroll $5 million in damages after finding Mr. Trump liable for sexually abusing her in the mid-1990s and liable for defaming her last year when he described her claim of assault as a “complete con job,” a “Hoax and a lie” in a social media post.

    Ms. Carroll said on Thursday morning that she had been asleep as Mr. Trump talked about her on the town hall program. She said that her lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, had sent her the transcript of his comments, and that she had read only the first paragraph.

    “It’s just stupid, it’s just disgusting, vile, foul, it wounds people,” Ms. Carroll said in an interview with The New York Times, adding that she had been “insulted by better people.”

    Ms. Carroll said she had been infuriated when her longtime stylist told her that her 15-year-old son was talking about what Mr. Trump had said.

    “I am upset on the behalf of young men in America,” Ms. Carroll said. “They cannot listen to this balderdash and this old-timey view of women, which is a cave-man view.”

    In addition to the case that ended Tuesday, Ms. Carroll has an earlier defamation suit against Mr. Trump that is still pending. Mr. Trump has argued in that case that he cannot be sued because he made those comments in his official capacity as president.

    On Thursday, Ms. Kaplan said no decision had been made on whether a new defamation suit would be filed in light of Mr. Trump’s latest comments.

    “Everything’s on the table, obviously, and we have to give serious consideration to it,” Ms. Kaplan said. “We have to weigh the various pros and cons and we’ll come to a decision in the next day or so, probably.”

    Mr. Trump, in response to questions from the CNN moderator about the Manhattan jury’s verdict against him on Tuesday, called Ms. Carroll a “wack job” and said her civil trial was “a rigged deal.”

    His comments drew laughter and applause from an audience drawn primarily from Republican groups and others who were said to identify with no political party.

    Mr. Trump mocked Ms. Carroll’s story.

    “What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings them up and within minutes you’re playing hanky-panky in a dressing room?” Mr. Trump said.

    https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fdnyuz.com%2F2023%2F05%2F11%2Fe-jean-carroll-may-sue-trump-a-third-time-after-vile-comments-on-cnn%2F

    Liked by 1 person

  4. FLA AG sues ultra maggot
    FTA
    FIRST ON FOX: Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody is seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the mass release of migrants into the U.S. coinciding with the end of the Title 42 public health order — arguing that it is “materially identical” to a policy that was blocked by a federal judge earlier this year.

    Moody, in a filing in the U.S. District Court Northern District of Florida, is arguing that a plan by the Department of Homeland Security to release migrants onto the streets if Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and NGOs are overcapacity is unlawful as it is too similar to the “Parole + ATD” policy enjoined by a federal judge in March

    That policy saw migrants paroled into the U.S. and enrolled into Alternatives to Detention. The federal judge accused the government of “effectively turned the Southwest Border into a meaningless line in the sand and little more than a speedbump for aliens flooding into the country.”

    But now, with the Title 42 public health order — which allows for the rapid expulsion of migrants at the southern border due to the COVID-19 pandemic — due to expire, there has been a fresh surge in migration which has overwhelmed authorities.

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/florida-ag-sues-biden-admin-stop-planned-mass-release-migrants-title-42-ends?intcmp=tw_fnc

    Liked by 2 people

  5. Hmmm….more boomers in the distance to the SW and it has clouded up again; hearing drops on the patio roof…..yep, here it comes! We had 4-5 hours of bright sunshine first; this is supposed to be off-and-on into Saturday, maybe Sunday.

    Liked by 2 people

  7. they’re charging that marine in NYC

    Donnyvee
    Donnyvee
    May 11, 2023 5:13 pm

    Per NBC News, NYC will charge former Marine in death of Jordan Neely. Once this gets full media attention, I’m thinking another 10,000 people will decide to leave NY City because of it.
    Last edited 25 minutes ago by Donnyvee

    Liked by 1 person

  8. BTW, I had to stop watching the TH – it was just too disgusting and she was, indeed, so very nasty – actually, I think the worst I’ve ever seen! I just couldn’t……

    Liked by 1 person

  9. I am adding a short daily prayer to the board. I would invite each of you, if you wish, to also add one or maybe two of your own liking. I do not want to stifle anyone but please limit yourself to one or two religious postings. here’s one I found that I liked.

    Like

  18. This is insane. Stay out of NY

    Marine vet Daniel Penny will be charged with manslaughter tomorrow over fatal subway chokehold on homeless man Jordan Neely – as woke DA Alvin Bragg FINALLY makes a call
    Penny, 24, is expected to surrender himself to a police station after Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office confirmed he will be charged and arraigned
    The four-year Marine veteran restrained Neely after he menaced terrified train passengers at the Broadway-Lafayette Street station last Monday
    Protesters demanded justice for Neely who has a history of vicious attacks on subway passengers including a 67-year-old woman he left with a broken nose

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12074387/Marine-veteran-Daniel-Penny-charged-TOMORROW-fatal-subway-Jordan-Neely-chokehold.html

    Liked by 1 person

  19. E. Jean Carroll threatens to sue Trump a THIRD time over his ‘vile’ comments during CNN town hall with Kaitlan Collins – as ex-President formally files appeal against the $5 million sexual abuse and defamation verdict
    Carroll told the New York Times on Thursday she may file a defamation suit
    Said it would be a response to ‘disgusting’ comments Trump made to Collins
    Trump has also filed a formal appeal against the $5million in damages

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12074615/Trump-APPEALS-E-Jean-Carroll-verdict.html

    Go away you &*&*&*&.

    But glad that Trump is fighting back

    Liked by 1 person

    1. i say he counter sue for defamation–she has been claiming he raped her–and the jury did not find that…so that’s defamation on his character

      Like

        1. I would probably send a manuscript for her approval…Cinderella, as told by the UGLIEST STEPSISTER. see if she’d sign off for me…LOL

          Liked by 1 person

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