After the read What is Black Mother-of-Pearl article, you will learn about the below.
What is black mother-of-pearl?
What is black mother-of-pearl shell?
How the back pearls are formed?
What is black mother-of-pearl shell’s morphological characteristic?
What is black mother-of-pearl shell’s habitat?
What is Black mother-of-pearl color type and characteristic?
How rare of the back pearls?
What is a black-lip mother-of-pearl?
Black mother-of-pearl (Pinctada margaritifera), the Black Mother-of-Pearl shell is the mother of black pearl shell, also called black lip shell. Black mother-of-pearl Shell’s scientific name is black mother-of-pearl which is the mother of black pearls, but also the only pearl shell that can produce black pearls.
Black mother-of-pearl shell meat flavor, edible; shell and pearl in addition to ornamental jewelry or decorative, but also can be used for medicine.
Pearls are cold, sweet, and salty, with the effect of calming the mind, calming the liver and submerging the sun, brightening the eyes and removing cataracts, clearing away heat and detoxifying the toxins, and astringing the muscles.
Shells developed into pearl powder for medicinal use and manufacture of cosmetics, etc, shells are also the raw material for shell carving, used for inlay and tin crafts, sheets, and mosaics, and can also be processed into combs, buttons, and other daily necessities.
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What is black mother-of-pearl shell?
Black-lip pearl shell, also known as black mother-of-pearl shell, is a marine mollusk in the genus Pearlyshell of the order Pearlyshellae.
The black-lip pearl shell is large or medium-sized, nearly square or irregularly rounded;
The black-lip pearl shell texture is thick or slightly thin, the two shells are slightly equal, and the two sides are unequal;
The dorsal margin is straight, ventral margin is mostly rounded;
The black-lip pearl shell apex situated about the middle of the dorsal margin, usually with shell auricles anteriorly and posteriorly, anterior and posterior auricles conspicuous or not so conspicuous;
The black-lip pearl shell colour varied, dark brown, yellow-brown, black-green, purple-brown, etc;
Surface with growth scales, some with irregular radial bands;
Pedipalp aperture located below the right shell anterior auricle, the pedipalp is more developed;
The inner surface of the shell with thick, lustrous pearl layer;
The black-lip pearl shell margin is thin, prismatic, and easily broken;
Closed-shell muscle scar distinct, horseshoe-shaped;
Hinge teeth present or absent, ligaments slender, brownish;
Ligamentous grooves are wider, without aqueducts, with an anal membrane at the end of the rectum.
How does the black mother-of-pearl shell form pearls?
The shell of black mother-of-pearl consists of crystals of calcium carbonate derived from secretions of epithelial cells in the fleshy membrane, or coat membrane, of the soft part of the shellfish.
Normally, these secretions accumulate in very regular layers and form the chitin, which keeps the shell of the shellfish growing.
By chance, small sand particles or larvae of organisms fall between the shellfish’s outer coat membrane and the inner surface of the shell, and these foreign particles continually intercept the secretions of the epithelial cells once they cannot be rapidly expelled from the body;
Taking the small particles as their nuclei, the secretions gradually precipitate and form crystals which encase the small particles, and after a time the shiny pearl is formed.
What is black mother-of-pearl shell’s morphological characteristic?
The black mother-of-pearl shell is slightly smaller than the White mother-of-pearl Shell, and the adult shell is about 13 cm long. Shell height is 12 cm, and shell thickness is 3 cm.
The shell is large and irregularly shaped. The surface of the shell is black or black-brown with white radial lines, and the hinge is short and toothless. Both ears are inconspicuous, or the anterior ear is short and the posterior ear is reduced.
Closed-shell muscle scars are large, apically not pointed. The scales growing on the shell surface are circumscribed and arranged in an imbricate shape.
The foot filaments of the black lip shell are particularly well developed, extending from the foot filament holes and then becoming filamentous.
On the inner surface of the shell, the pearl layer has a silvery-white glow with red and green iridescence, and the periphery of the pearl layer is dark green or silvery grey.
What is black mother-of-pearl shell’s habitat?
The black lip shell is distributed in the waters south of Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong, China, and is widely distributed in tropical and subtropical warm sea areas.
It lives an attached life, with degraded feet, and attaches itself to rocky reefs, gravel or coral reefs with its filaments, and prefers to live in the shallow seabed within 60 meters from the low-tide line in the intertidal zone of the inner bay, where the winds and waves are calmer, the water flow is smooth, the transparency is larger and the food is more abundant.
Black mother-of-pearl shells like to live in the sea with smooth currents and little change in water temperature and salinity, and their living water level is generally 10-40 meters.
In the seabed, most of them are attached to the interstices of rocks or coral reefs with developed filaments. The food they take is usually diatoms and other tiny organisms.
The black mother-of-pearl shell is a filter-feeding shellfish, and its food is mainly diatoms, but also includes copepods and their larvae, organic debris, mollusk larvae or protozoa, and so on.
It is dioecious, and its breeding season is mostly from May to October when the water temperature is high, but it varies slightly according to different species and individuals.
What is black mother-of-pearl shell’s origin?
Black mother-of-pearl shells are mostly distributed in tropical and subtropical waters, and their two main natural origins include:
One is Tahiti in the Polynesian Islands, which produces 95% of the world’s black pearls; the other is Penryn and Majuhiki in the Cook Islands, which accounts for 4% of the total production.
The other Pacific islands produce less than one percent. These two regions reside together in the south-central Pacific Ocean.
Among the many origins of black butterfly shells, French Tahiti is the most famous, because Tahitian black butterfly shells are very rare and extremely harsh to the growing environment, and their value is also the highest among the black butterfly shells.
The Marbled Murrelet from the coast south of Zhejiang Province in China is known as the South Sea Pearl.
What is Black mother-of-pearl color type and characteristic?
The color of naturally occurring black mother-of-pearls is black, black-grey, black-blue, blue-green, and darker colors in the dark series. The most valuable are pure black and blue-black with strong pearly luster.
Is the black mother of pearl rare?
Black pearls are some of the rarest in the world, matched only by golden South Seas.
Unlike freshwater pearls, which mature quite quickly and in larger quantities, black-lipped oysters usually only produce one pearl at a time over a period of a few years. So the black mother-of-pearl is very rare.
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