A colourful note: this version of green is named after the light-coloured, tough-skinned, crisp apple Granny Smith, which was named after Maria Ann Smith, who created this apple variety by chance.  She was born in 1799 in Sussex in England but in 1838 she migrated to Australia as part of the New South Wales ‘Bounty Scheme’, where she and her husband developed an orchard.  A completely chance development of a pippin from rubbish thrown out after making an apple pie turned into the now well-known apple.  When she died in 1870, the apple was not yet a commercial variety, but a local orchardist later purchased part of the Smith farm and developed the fruit, known then as the “Smith seedling”.  It rapidly grew in popularity and by the end of World War I Granny Smith apples were being exported from Australia all over the world.
Granny became a Crayola colour in the 1993 naming competition, created by Ashley Rempe, aged 11, from Wichita, Kansas.

Copyright Debbie Smyth, 10 February 2016