Rich Flare Forest

Old French riche, wealthy, abundant — applied to color since the medieval period for hues that read as plentiful in pigment. Rich red, rich brown: the implication is depth combined with saturation, a color that gives the eye more to absorb. Sits at the saturated mid-light corner of the engine's grid, slightly warmer than bold and deeper than vivid.

Origin obscure, attested c. 1540, to-burn-with-an-unsteady-flame. As a color modifier, flare implies a sudden-and-spreading-and-bright-burst quality, the visual register of signal-flare-and-solar-flare hand-sudden-and-spreading-and-bright-burst signal-flare-and-solar-flare-and-magnesium-distress flared-and-sudden-and-spreading-and-bright surfaces under signal-flare-and-solar-flare-and-magnesium-distress shipboard-and-rescue-and-corona high-intensity-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to blaze and flash 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.