A very short entry explaining what green herring is, together with a visual explanation of why the silver darlings may have acquired that name
GREEN HERRING
Green Herring is a term for the fresh or uncured fish. The green refers to richer colour of the herring’s skin when caught (as seen in the illustration from Friedrich Heincke’s Naturgeschichte des Herings).
It does not refer not to the possibility that, traditionally, the herring might have gone off.