If you are lucky enough to have a March birthday, aquamarine is your stone! The meaning of aquamarine in Latin is aqua for “water” and marina for “of the sea.” So with that in mind, you can see that aquamarine has a range of color from greenish blue to blue. Aquamarine is believed to enable a wearer’s highest truth to be expressed to the world. It is said to soothe and wash away strong emotions like loneliness and grief.
Aquamarine is a member of the beryl family of gemstones, which includes emerald. It, however, is a durable gemstone and is 7.5-8 on the Mohs scale (diamond 10), where emerald is much less durable. Aquamarine is pleochroic (meaning having multiple colors) and will display itself between colorless and greenish-blue, depending on the orientation of the stone. Unlike emerald, aquamarine has very good clarity (few to no inclusions), which allows light to travel beautifully thru the gemstone. Up until the late 1800s-early 1900s, aquamarine’s natural greenish-blue color was favored. Today, after heat treatment to remove the greenish hue, a strongly medium-dark blue aquamarine is the result and commands a higher value. This heat treatment is permanent. Keeping an aquamarine clean (with dishsoap and water) will maintain its fresh clear look.
The main source of aquamarine is Brazil. Pakistan is another significant source, with China producing commercial-grade, very pale aquamarine for mass-market jewelry available thru home-shopping networks.
Lab-grown aquamarine has been produced in Russia, but is not widely available. Gemstones that imitate aquamarine are treated blue topaz, and glass.
March birthdays also have an alternative birthstone...bloodstone. Bloodstone is an opaque/semi-translucent type of dark green chalcedony quartz with bright red flecks of jasper. Early Christians created bloodstone jewelry for it was believed to represent the blood of Christ. Bloodstone is a much softer stone than aquamarine, being 6.5-7 on the Mohs scale. It is still durable stone and can be safely bezel set into rings.
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