Cool Shade Moss

Old English cōl, of low temperature — used as a color modifier as the complement to warm. Cool gray, cool blue: the optical impression of a slight blue-green shift, even within otherwise warm or neutral hues. Sits across the crisp, hushed, pale, and neutral buckets.

Old English sceadu, shadow-or-shelter. As a color modifier, shade implies a sheltered-and-cool-and-shadowed quality, the visual register of Tuscan-cypress-and-Provençal-plane-tree-shade hand-sheltered-and-cool-and-shadowed Tuscan-cypress-and-Provençal-plane-tree-and-English-yew shaded-and-sheltered-and-cool surfaces under Tuscan-cypress-and-Provençal-plane-tree-and-English-yew dappled-and-cool-and-filtered afternoon-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to shadow and gloam in usage.

Bryophyta — the nonvascular plants that colonized land 470 million years ago, before vascular plants and far before flowers. The color refers to a thick mat of Hypnum or sphagnum on a temperate forest floor: a soft, slightly yellow-shifted green with the velvet texture of millimeter-scale leaves. Dustier than fern, deeper than lichen, with the slow patience of a plant that lives by absorbing rain through its surface.