The Colors in Nature’s Palette

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Walking to get frozen yogurt last night Boo and I wandered through a gravel lot to get a closer look at the train and we found this:

I don’t know what kind of plant it is but we stood in awe for a few minutes wondering how that many hues could come from one tiny green vine. Here are a few of the actual color matches found in the photo:

Too many to even name but if I tried: mulberry, wheatgrass, camel are a few that come to mind. 

I uploaded the photo to Palette FX to get a few names:
Butterfly Bush
Limed Spruce*
Horizon
Tom Thumb
Flax Smoke
Pale Oyster
Pippin
Petite Orchid

*my favorite

This morning I stumbled across this watercolor painting of the old Bethlehem Steel Company in Pennsylvania. It was painted in 1881 by Joseph Pennell and what struck me was how ominous it looked.

Source

I started trying to come up with names for the colors used and most at first had a sterile theme of ash, coal, pollution,  and alchemy. But what if I ran it through the same palette generator? Stripped out the colors are beautiful:

And check out the names (from left to right):

1. Pink Flare
2. Mountbatten Pink
3. Amethyst Smoke
4. Smoky
5. _____
6. Casper
7. Fiord
8. Pattens Blue
9. Elephant
10. Pancho
11. _____
12. Sambuca
13. _____

I don’t know why 5, 11 and 13 don’t have names yet. Maybe you have an idea for them.