Smooth Stir Moss

Old English smōþ, level, polished — used as a color modifier since the seventeenth century for hues that read as continuous without texture or break. Smooth tan, smooth gray: moderate saturation combined with optical evenness. Sits in the crisp-bucket alongside even.

Old English styrian, to-move-or-agitate. As a color modifier, stir implies a slow-moved-and-rippled-and-agitated quality, the visual register of cauldron-and-tea-cup-stir hand-slow-moved-and-rippled-and-agitated cauldron-and-tea-cup-and-pot-au-feu stirred-and-slow-moved-and-rippled-and-agitated surfaces under cauldron-and-tea-cup-and-pot-au-feu kitchen-hearth-and-witch's-fire-and-parlor-tea-table simmer-and-eddy-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to swirl and eddy 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.