Plain Catnip Moss

Latin planus, flat, level — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as undecorated and direct. Plain white, plain blue: moderate saturation, no shift, no surface effect. Sits in the crisp-bucket center, with the implication of restraint rather than absence.

Old English catte-nepe, cat-mint-or-catnip. As a color modifier, catnip implies a cat-mint-and-grey-green-cottage-herb quality, the visual register of English-cottage-and-Quaker-herb-garden-catnip hand-cat-mint-and-grey-green-cottage-herb English-cottage-and-Quaker-herb-garden-catnip-and-Tudor-still-room catnip-and-cat-mint surfaces under English-cottage-and-Quaker-herb-garden-catnip-and-Tudor-still-room Sussex-cottage-and-New-England-Quaker-garden cottage-herb-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to hyssop and lovage 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.