Purple

Even a purple frog!

I dedicate this post to my favourite colour purple!

There are several interesting facts about this colour. Such as during the times of Elizabethan clothing the people that were allowed to wear the colour purple was dictated by English law known as sumptuary law. Colours that people wore would inform others of their status, not just in wealth but also their social standing.

Where does the name and colour of purple originate?
It comes from a dye made from the mucus glands of a tropical sea snail. This discovery is associated with the legend of the God Heracles, a guardian deity. It is said that his dog bit the
snail and immediately its mouth turned purple. His companion a nymph named Tyrus, demanded that he dye her clothes this colour otherwise she would not sleep with him. And so the Tyrian purple dye was created.

Purple LandThe Greeks even went on to refer to the land of Tyre as "purple land" . It required 250,000 shellfish to produce one ounce of purple. In time it came to be worth more than gold.

Purple is associated with royalty, wealth and power, but why?
This can be traced back as far as the Greeks and Romans. Triumphant generals would wear robes of purple and gold whilst senators and consuls would wear togas with bands of purple. By the 4th century only the emporer was allowed to wear the best purple. They particularly liked a dark shade of purple which they described as "clotted blood".

In 1909 an austrian chemist assessed the chemical properties of the dye and realized it was almost the same as blue indigo extracted from an Indian plant called Indigofera tinctoria.

Even more surprising is that in 2007 a team of researchers concluded that early life may have been purple as plants used to use a different form of photosynthesis however the modern way prevailed, hence the reason that plants are now green instead of purple. This was more efficient.