Yellow-white gold surrounded by green leaves? (5)
I believe the answer is:
ivory
'green leaves?' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both human attributes as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see an association between them that I can't see?
'yellow-white gold surrounded by' is the wordplay.
'yellow white' becomes 'ivy' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'gold' becomes 'or' ('or' is the heraldic name for gold).
'surrounded by' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'ivy' enclosing 'or' is 'IVORY'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for ivory that I've seen before include "Hard creamy-white dentine used for making ornaments" , "Jumbo's dentine" , "Piano key" , "Shade of white" , "Creamy white" .)