Hazel (Didn't mean to scare you!!)

(I gotta say, I almost didn't do this. I had to fuss with this in Picasa before I was brave to post a closeup of my eye on the Internet. Egad! I am lucky I have eyes, lucky to have sight, lucky to be aging....and I swear to all that is holy that I am not that vain...but still. Egad! My mother had hazel eyes and my son has hazel eyes. I love that three generations have this in common.)


Hazel eyes are due to a combination of Rayleigh scattering and a moderate amount of melanin in the iris' anterior border layer. Hazel eyes often appear to shift in color from a brown to a green. Although hazel mostly consists of brown and green, the dominant color in the eye can either be brown/gold or green. This is how many people mistake hazel eyes to be amber and vice versa. This can sometimes produce a multicolored iris, i.e., an eye that is light brown/amber near the pupil and charcoal or dark green on the outer part of the iris (or vice versa) when observed in sunlight.
Definitions of the eye color hazel vary: it is sometimes considered to be synonymous with light brown or gold, as in the color of a hazelnut shell.

Hazel eyes are common throughout Caucasoid populations, in particular in regions where blue, green and brown eyed peoples are intermixed.

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