Surveyed Dill Moss

Old French surveer, to look upon — past-participle of survey. As a color modifier, surveyed implies a clear-and-measured-and-coordinated quality, the crisp color of Mason-Dixon-Line-and-Royal-Navy-Hydrographic scientific-and-cadastral land-and-sea surveying tradition. Sits at the crisp-and-mapped end of the grid, parallel to mapped and plotted in usage.

Old English dile, aromatic-fern-leaf-herb. As a color modifier, dill implies a feathery-and-fresh-and-pickling quality, the visual register of Scandinavian-and-pickling-dill hand-feathery-and-fresh-and-pickling Scandinavian-and-pickling-dill-and-Polish-Eastern-European dill-and-feathery-and-fresh-and-pickling surfaces under Scandinavian-and-pickling-dill-and-Polish-Eastern-European Stockholm-and-Gdansk-and-Riga-pickling-jar Baltic-pickling-light. Sits at the modifier-and-flavor end of the grid, parallel to chive and anise 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.