Engraved Glen Moss

Old French engraver, to dig in — past-participle of engrave. As a color modifier, engraved implies a clear-and-precisely-cut quality, the crisp color of Albrecht-Dürer-and-Hogarth hand-pulled engraving-print fine-line incised-image. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to etched and inscribed in usage.

Scottish-Gaelic gleann, narrow valley between hills. As a color modifier, glen implies a sheltered-and-mossy quality, the visual register of Scottish-Highland deep-cut river-valleys with peat-water-and-bracken hand-cut shieling-and-bothy crofting-life surfaces under Highland-and-overcast sky. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to vale and dell 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.