Lush Dome 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.

Latin domus, house. As a color modifier, dome implies a hemispherical-vaulted-roof quality, the visual register of Roman-Pantheon-and-Hagia-Sophia-and-Taj-Mahal hand-built hemispherical-roof dome-and-cupola architectural surfaces under monumental-dome interior-and-exterior architectural light. Sits at the modifier-and-architecture end of the grid, parallel to cupola and arch 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.