Songfacts®:

• Little Green is about the child that Joni Mitchell gave up for adoption in 1965:
  
  you sign all the papers in the family name
  you are sad and you're sorry but you're not ashamed
  little green have a happy ending
  
  Mitchell gave birth to the child, who she named Kelly Dale, six months earlier, traveling from Saskatchewan to Toronto to so and keeping it secret from her parents. The father was out of the picture, but she tried to keep the child and establish a family by marrying a singer named Chuck Mitchell, but it didn't work out. She explained in a 1998 interview with Toronto Globe and Mail: "I was dirt poor. An unhappy mother does not raise a happy child. It was difficult parting with the child, but I had to let her go."
  
  Joni and her daughter were reunited in 1997, but it did not have a happy ending - they broke off contact a few years later. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Todd - Atlanta, GA
• Mitchell's daughter Kelly Dale Anderson was born February 19, 1965. Mitchell chose the name Kelly after the color kelly green, which represented spring - thus the song's title. Kelly's adoptive parents David and Ida Gibb renamed her Kilauren. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Annabelle - Eugene, OR