Tenacious Waft Hibiscus

Latin tenāx, holding-fast — adjectival suffix -ous. As a color modifier, tenacious implies a saturated-and-clinging quality where the hue grips its substrate with stubborn pigmentation. Sits at the bold-and-resilient end of the grid, parallel to unyielding and adamant in usage.

Middle English waft, related to wafian, to-wave-in-air. As a color modifier, waft implies a gently-conveyed-and-air-borne-and-drifting quality, the visual register of incense-and-rose-petal-waft hand-gently-conveyed-and-air-borne-and-drifting incense-and-rose-petal-and-summer-curtain wafted-and-gently-conveyed-and-air-borne surfaces under incense-and-rose-petal-and-summer-curtain church-thurible-and-walled-rose-garden-and-open-window airborne-drift-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to drift and mist 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.