Coming soon to a green space near you …
Wherever I walk, I’m now seeing bulbs sending forth their green shoots, to be followed in a month or two by glorious Spring flowers. These are Wild garlic but I’m seeing a lot of Bluebell and Daffodil shoots (and there are planted Daffs already flowering in a local road verge). I’m probably being madly fanciful but I think these particular shoots look like green fingers, nails at their tips. Is this where the term originally came from, I wonder?
earthstar 
I hadn’t realised this before but they do look like green fingers with dark green nails. Thanks.
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Happy to share my weird imaginings. 🙂
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I see what you mean about the fingers and fingernails, although it does seem a bit creepy — it makes me think of horror films in which the dead claw their way out of graves.
For what it’s worth, the OED says that the first occurrence of the phrase “green fingers” in print was in 1906, in a book called “The Misses Make-believe” by Mary Stuart Boyd:
“What old wives call ‘green fingers’: those magic digits that appear to ensure the growth of everything they plant.”
Obviously, the fact that Boyd refers to its being something “old wives” said means it predates 1906 by quite some time (things don’t become well-known sayings quickly).
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Sorry if I creeped you out a little. And thanks for researching and sharing the green fingers info. 🙂
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