Chrysoprase
Gold touched with leek (prason is the Greek word for leek) marks the color of the chrysoprase. It is a light green quartz, a variety of chalcedony. As chrysoprasus, it is listed in the King James Bible as the tenth foundation stone of the New Jerusalem.
Citrine
Named from the citrus family, citrine is a lemon-yellow variety of quartz. When clear, it may be used as becomingly as topaz.
Coral
Coral is a fairly hard substance, mainly calcium carbonate, made up of the skeletons of myriads of marine animals called polyps. These skeletons, attached to one another, through the centuries have formed shelves in the ocean, or shaped themselves as atolls and far-extending reefs. Coral may be in many colors, white, black, yellow, blue, and—most popular in jewelry—shades of pink and red. The reddish shades, the Greeks inform us, are dyed by the blood of the Gorgon Medusa, whose snake-haired head, lopped off by Perseus, dripped its gore into the sea as he laid it by to wash his hands. Scientists inform us the red is produced by the presence of iron oxide.
The ancient Romans placed coral on cradles, to protect the babe against the ills of infancy, especially teething. Even today, Italian peasants use it as a charm against sterility, or in the form of a little bell the wind might make tinkle to drive off evil spirits. If one has ever knocked wood, one might place on the babe a ring or a trinket of coral.
References to the beloved one’s coral lips were so frequent in Renaissance poetry that Shakespeare in revulsion wrote his Sonnet 130: