In Japanese, "青" (ao) traditionally covered certain shades of both blue and green (blue sky, blue traffic lights, blue apples and many other plants). "緑" (mido

In Japanese, "青" (ao) traditionally covered certain shades of both blue and green (blue sky, blue traffic lights, blue apples and many other plants). "緑" (midori) is more solidly green, coming from a root word used to describe flourishing trees. I think that it's still considered a shade of ao. They'll sometimes use a phonetic rendering of English "green", and I'm not really clear on the difference in meaning there.