Lush Park Hibiscus

Middle English lush, possibly from lascious, lascivious — a word that drifted from sensual ripeness toward visual abundance. Used as a color word since the eighteenth century for the saturated greens of well-watered foliage and the deep saturated jewel tones of velvet upholstery. Used across the deep and bold buckets where the hue is simultaneously dark and vivid.

Old French parc, enclosed-game-preserve. As a color modifier, park implies a landscaped-and-managed-greenspace quality, the visual register of Stowe-and-Versailles hand-landscaped-and-managed enclosed deer-park-and-pleasure-garden surfaces under designed-landscape Stowe-and-Versailles formal-pleasure-garden light. Sits at the modifier-and-place end of the grid, parallel to garden and court in usage.

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis — the showy mallow of Pacific gardens, the Hawaiian state flower, the source of the deep red sorrel tea sold across West Africa as bissap. The color refers to a fully open hibiscus petal at midday: a hot, slightly magenta red with the velvet texture of a single-day bloom. By evening the same flower has wilted; by morning it's gone.