Plain Lurk Moss

Latin planus, flat, level — used as a color modifier since the medieval period for hues that read as undecorated and direct. Plain white, plain blue: moderate saturation, no shift, no surface effect. Sits in the crisp-bucket center, with the implication of restraint rather than absence.

Middle English lurken, to-lie-hidden. As a color modifier, lurk implies a hidden-and-watching-and-shadowed quality, the visual register of forest-edge-and-alley-mouth-lurk hand-hidden-and-watching-and-shadowed forest-edge-and-alley-mouth-and-bridge-undercroft lurked-and-hidden-and-watching-and-shadowed surfaces under forest-edge-and-alley-mouth-and-bridge-undercroft Gothic-novel-and-fairy-tale-and-noir half-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to creep and prowl 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.