See you later, April showers – it’s time for May flowers! No matter where you live, spring is one of the best times of the year – the weather is great, plants and flowers begin blooming all over the place and all that rain that usually blows in with April gives way to blue, sunny skies. Sure, some of us have to deal with aggravating seasonal allergies, but isn’t a bottle of Claritin or Zyrtec a small price to pay for such lovely weather?
Of course, if you were born in the month of May, then you’ve also got something else to help you ignore all that pesky pollen and enjoy the month: emeralds. Yes, these beautiful green gems – which happen to be some of the rarest in the entire world – are May’s birthstones. Let’s find out more about them.
Emeralds
Green has long been associated with springtime. There’s that aforementioned pollen that’s always blowing around, for instance. Aside from all the sneezing, runny noses and watery eyes it causes, pollen does a lot of good. It brings life to plants and goes a long way toward makes spring the beautiful time of year it is. It’s no surprise then that the rich green emerald is May’s birthstone.
In fact, the deeper and more vivid the shade of green in any given emerald, the more that stone will be valued at. Perhaps the most striking and certainly the most costly, though, are those emeralds that possess an intense blueish hue along with their standard green. It’s also expected that each one will have at least some inclusions, so their presence does not mitigate a stone’s value as much as it would for some other gemstones.
Because the stone is already a rare one, those emeralds of the highest quality are available only in extremely limited quantities.
The color of emeralds varies from light to dark green, and it is thought that the presence of chromium and/or vanadium occurring in place of some of the aluminum that appears in the gem’s structure is responsible for this difference in hues. It’s also possible for emeralds to lose their color entirely when they’re exposed to extreme heat.
A part of the beryl family of minerals that includes morganite, heliodor and aquamarine, the emerald has been utilized in the creation of several famous historic artifacts. For instance, the Crown of the Andes was constructed from emeralds and said to have been worn by Atahualpa, who was the last Incan ruler of Peru. Four hundred and fifty jewels were used to make the crown, causing it to weigh in at 10 ounces or 1,523 carats.
Typically mined in Brazil, Zambia, Afghanistan and Colombia, emeralds symbolize love and rebirth. They’re also the gem of Venus, so mystics believe them to be able to aid in fertility. What’s more, it was once thought that the emerald could grant its wearer youth and good fortune. Sounds like a good deal. I mean, who wouldn’t sign up for that?
No one probably, but some famous names who definitely loved a good emerald include Liz Taylor and the ancient Egyptian monarch Cleopatra. It was common during Cleopatra’s time for mummies to be buried with an emerald carved with the symbol of flourishing greatness into their necks. Sounds a bit on the creepy side, to be sure, but the idea was that it symbolized eternal youth.
The Egyptians dug up emeralds as far back as 330 BC, but the stone actually gets its name from the Greeks. The name comes from the word “smaragdus,” which means “green” in Greek. Egypt was far from the only Old World locale where emeralds where in vogue, either. Babylon’s royals wore them, for example.
And when Spanish conquistadors made landfall for the first time in South America, they encountered native rulers clad in the jewels. The source was identified in 1537 to be a Columbian mine, and that mine has been in operation almost nonstop in the nearly 500 years since. It’s fair to say that it is Colombia’s most famous emerald mine. In fact, some even believe that it is responsible for producing the most impressive emeralds in the world.
Cubic Zirconia
Just before the start of World War II, German chemists figured out how to create a synthetic version of emeralds, but it wasn’t until 1946 when high-quality synthetic stones were first grown in the United States. Today, jewelry shoppers can also choose to buy high-quality cubic zirconia jewelry, which is available in a number of different colors. These pieces may be affordable, but they have cubic zirconia jewels that are so beautiful that most people are unable to tell the difference between them and real diamonds.