Velvety Sufi 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.

Arabic صوفي, Sufi. As a color modifier, sufi implies a Whirling-Dervish-and-mystical-Islamic quality, the visual register of Persian-and-Anatolian-Sufi Sufi hand-woven robe-and-felt-cap-and-whirling-dance Sufi-mystical-Islamic surfaces under Konya-and-Persian Sufi-Whirling-Dervish ceremonial-robe candlelight. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to zen and tao 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.