Sterile Caper Moss

Latin sterilis, barren / not-fertile — sharing root with Greek steiros (barren). As a color modifier, sterile implies a clear-and-medical-clean-and-stripped quality, the crisp color of operating-theater surgical-environment white-and-stainless-steel surfaces. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to sanitary and hygienic in usage.

Greek κάππαρις, Mediterranean-pickled-bud. As a color modifier, caper implies a Mediterranean-pickled-bud-and-briny-tang quality, the visual register of Pantelleria-and-Sicilian-caper hand-Mediterranean-pickled-bud-and-briny-tang Pantelleria-and-Sicilian-caper-and-Aeolian-Islands caper-and-Mediterranean-pickled-bud surfaces under Pantelleria-and-Sicilian-caper-and-Aeolian-Islands Pantelleria-and-Aeolian-and-Sicilian Mediterranean-brine-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to anise and tang 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.