Frank Mistral Moss

From the Old French franc, free, sincere — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as direct and unhedged. Frank red, frank brown: moderate-to-high saturation combined with optical directness. Sits at the crisp-bucket alongside direct and honest.

Provençal mistral, cold-northwest-wind-of-Provence. As a color modifier, mistral implies a cold-Provençal-and-Rhône-Valley-wind quality, the visual register of Provençal-and-Rhône-Valley-mistral hand-cold-Provençal-and-Rhône-Valley-wind Provençal-and-Rhône-Valley-mistral-and-Alpilles mistral-and-cold-Provençal-and-Rhône-Valley-wind surfaces under Provençal-and-Rhône-Valley-mistral-and-Alpilles Avignon-and-Saint-Rémy-and-Camargue cold-Rhône-Valley-wind-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to sirocco and gust in usage.

Bryophyta — the nonvascular plants that colonized land 470 million years ago, before vascular plants and far before flowers. The color refers to a thick mat of Hypnum or sphagnum on a temperate forest floor: a soft, slightly yellow-shifted green with the velvet texture of millimeter-scale leaves. Dustier than fern, deeper than lichen, with the slow patience of a plant that lives by absorbing rain through its surface.