Imperial Woven Forest

From the Latin imperialis, of the empire — applied to color since the medieval period for the hues reserved for sovereigns and empires: imperial purple of Tyrian dye, imperial yellow of Ming-dynasty porcelain. As a modifier, imperial implies saturation combined with the institutional weight of a color owned by a court. Sits in the bold-and-deep corner, alongside royal.

Old English wefan, to-weave. As a color modifier, woven implies a hand-loomed-warp-and-weft quality, the visual register of hand-loom-and-jacquard-loom hand-woven-and-loomed warp-and-weft hand-woven-and-loomed-textile surfaces under hand-woven-and-loomed-textile workshop-light. Sits at the modifier-and-texture end of the grid, parallel to spun and knit 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.