Green is one of the less important, yet frequently occurring colours. In non-German heraldry, it is also known as sinople or vert.
In the Middle Ages, green was used as a pure, unmixed, mineral-based colour derived from verdigris, or – from the 19th century onwards – as Paris green, for example for painting. Various dye plants were used for dyeing textiles. However, the shade of green varied depending on which dye plant was used. These could include: apple tree bark, sorrel leaves, chervil, myrtle, St John’s wort, lady’s mantle, beard lichen, sage, bear’s-foot, bird’s-foot trefoil, witch hazel leaves, elder leaves, heather, heath (for a yellow-green), ivy leaves, horsetail, stinging nettle (for a grey-green), birch, stinging nettle, dyer’s reseda (Latin: Reseda luteola), goldenrod, yarrow (for a medium green), dyer’s broom, tansy, marigold (for a light green), calendula, pansy, cornflower blossoms (for a lime green), ivy berries (for a mint green), rhubarb and sunflower (for an olive green).
In black-and-white depictions of coats of arms or three-dimensional representations of coats of arms carved in stone, green is represented by fine diagonal lines. Green is associated with the planet Venus and the gemstone emerald, and it often symbolises freedom, beauty, joy, health and hope.
Today, the colour green – particularly on flags – is associated with fertility, nature, vegetation, agriculture, forests, freedom, prosperity and hope. In some regions, green is regarded as the colour of Islam, the colour of the Christian Resurrection, and of Irish Catholicism. It symbolises Easter, and in China it symbolises life, spring and the East.
In colour psychology, green is said to have a calming effect. However, it is also associated with nature, youth, tranquillity, the environment, healing properties, poison and decay.
Green was the colour of the Prophet Muhammad’s cloak. In those days, it was sometimes customary (even in Europe) to use items of clothing as flags. This was also the case with Muhammad’s cloak. The colour of the cloak very quickly became the colour and flag of Islam, and specifically the colour of the Fatimids, an Ismaili-Shia caliphate dynasty tracing its origins back to the fourth caliph, Ali, and Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad. This is another reason why green is one of the pan-Arab colours.
Of course, green is also a political colour these days. It originally stood for a love of nature and environmental protection, but has become the new red – the colour of a particular political strand on the left which, devoid of any sense of reality, seeks to impose a certain way of life and, above all, a political style on everyone with schoolmasterly condescension; an ideologically overburdened, embarrassing form of narrow-mindedness that, shunning any objective argumentation, relies on collectivist thinking, and employs methods reminiscent of medieval 'pillorying' or malicious denunciation.
