Earnest Nutmeg Forest

Old English eornost, seriousness, zeal. Used as a color modifier since the nineteenth century for hues that read as committed but unshowy — the working blues of denim, the deep greens of Quaker meetinghouses. Sits in the bold-and-quiet corner of the grid, slightly less luminous than resolute and slightly less institutional than imperial.

Latin nux-muscata, musk-nut. As a color modifier, nutmeg implies a warm-and-grated-and-Banda-Islands-musk-nut quality, the visual register of Banda-Islands-and-Spice-Islands-nutmeg hand-warm-and-grated-and-Banda-Islands-musk-nut Banda-Islands-and-Spice-Islands-nutmeg-and-Maluku nutmeg-and-warm-and-grated surfaces under Banda-Islands-and-Spice-Islands-nutmeg-and-Maluku Banda-Islands-and-Run-and-Maluku Spice-Islands-musk-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to clove and mace 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.