Velvety Tatar Forest

An adjectival form of velvet, used since the eighteenth century for colors that read as if they had the matte light-absorbing quality of velvet. Implies high saturation combined with a non-glossy surface — the matte richness of a deep wine in a fabric rather than in a glass. Sits in the bold-and-deep corner of the grid alongside plush and lush.

Mongolian Tatar, Tatar. As a color modifier, tatar implies a Kazan-and-Crimean-Khanate quality, the visual register of Tatar-Khanate-of-Kazan-and-Crimea Mongol-successor Central-Asian-and-Eastern-European hand-built Khanate-and-trading-city surfaces under Kazan-and-Crimean Tatar-Khanate post-Mongol-successor trading-and-fortress light. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to mongol and hun in usage.

The dense canopy of a temperate or tropical woodland — oak, beech, pine, eucalyptus, mahogany — wherever leaves close above to filter the light below. Forest green refers to the average reflectance of a healthy mid-summer canopy seen from below: a saturated, slightly muted green with the matte finish of layered chlorophyll. Deeper than fern, cooler than olive, with the ecological weight of a word that has named every wooded biome on Earth.