Stately Plumed Forest

An adjectival form of state, condition of dignity. Used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for the deep saturated jewel tones of formal ceremony — the deep blue of a robes-of-state, the deep red of a state-banquet velvet. Sits in the bold-and-formal corner alongside imperial and royal, with slightly less institutional weight.

Latin plūma, feather. As a color modifier, plumed implies a feathered-and-decorative-feather quality, the visual register of Edwardian-and-Belle-Époque-plumed-hat hand-set-and-decorative ostrich-and-egret-feather Edwardian-and-Belle-Époque plumed-and-feathered-hat surfaces under Edwardian-and-Belle-Époque plumed-hat-and-feather millinery-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to fluff and down 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.