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My dictionary tells 青 can mean black.
My questions are:
青 does not mean black in modern Chinese (likely due to semantic transition). It can mean black in classical Chinese, but that does not mean its meaning is ambiguous either, given the context is understood. Consider the following:
君不見高堂明鏡悲白髮，朝如青絲暮成雪。——李白《將進酒》
This verse by the Tang poet Li Bai laments how one's hair becomes white overnight. We see 青絲 as a metaphor for young, black hair, and it makes no sense to interpret 青 here as dark blue. (Or actually, dark blue and black are not that different; saying it means black is merely a problem of translation.)
Replacing 青 with 黑 does not work in modern Chinese. Replacing 青 with 黑 in classical Chinese, however, is not impossible, although very unorthodox. Here's why:
Usually 青絲, 青鬢 are fixed expressions. It would sound odd if we say 黑絲, 黑鬢 instead. 黑絲 in particular sounds like stockings (黑絲襪).
I think it is unwise to think Chinese (classical Chinese in particular) has a one-to-one correspondence to every nameable colour. For example we say 赤子之心 (the heart of a child), never *紅子之心 despite the fact that both 赤 and 紅 mean red. (Note: 赤子 is a metaphoric expression for newborns with healthy, red faces). We ought to respect etymology and collocation of words whenever possible. So I think it is rather wrong to consider 青 as absolutely equivalent to 黑 just because they can mean black.
In the case of 青, it has been postulated that (based on its etymology) it is a colour of youth or vitality, rather than a fixed colour of black, or green, or blue. This is of course contentious, but not an unreasonable explanation.
Well if you recall - blue is somewhat a new color to us and wasn't actually seen until modern times. So this makes sense for why the same word that had meant "black" became also the word for "blue". (I say in this order as, clearly as consideration of this information shows, the odds of it having been first "blue" and then lafter interpreted as "black" is unlikely since we did not see the color blue until recently.)
• https://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2
