in plants and fungi which do
not even have brains or move.

You’ve adjusted context to change focus from qualities of established vocalization patterns to fundamental motility. Color as a phenomenon of outward appearance does not obey the same principles as observation, cognition, willful behavior and verbalization.

The externalities involved in plants adapting colors to suit pollinating insects, versus crustaceans adapting colors to avoid being scavenged by birds when they wash up on shore, have nothing to do with the noises animals make to sound alarms or warn of aggression.

The next layer beyond the more obvious emotive sounds, is subtle noises in proximity like cats purring or infrasound at a distance among elephants. These sorts of noises still don’t signal choices, which is why we wouldn’t find obvious objective patterns for color.

Most telling though, is the history of the word for Orange. This alone indicates that the factors for thinking about colors, no matter how attention grabbing they might innately be, is extremely subjective. Most colors find their root words in a famous noun as the parent object for the concept of the color. Blue as the sky. Brown as the dirt. Green as the grass. (not literally these words, but definitely words like azul or chartreuse)

We know that colors exist, but to converse about them with peers is something few animals seem to do.

The next cognitive leap after dividing up the observable world with discrete vocabulary, is mastering the underlying principles that underpin the jargon used to describe objects. Realizing that light travels from source to target. Understanding that wind is an expression of air pressure and that air is more substantial than vacuum. Differentiating between fire and heat.

When can words to describe these principles arrive within a linguistic subculture? Only after a rich vocabulary already exists, and rules for arbitrary word construction emerge.

It doesn’t matter that evolutionary pathways are selecting for observable traits that result in ready differentiation of species. Language requires awarenes and the will to communicate.

The subject matter that gets prioritized for communication is going to be based on immediate operational factors and urgency. Necessity being the mother of invention. So it’s not about the senses. It’s about reacting to surroundings, whatever they may be, to gain advantage and persist in the wild, at the moment.

You won’t see apes describing orange as a quality of the fruit, nor would the orange trees be considering this fact as the orange gains success in convincing the apes to distribute the seeds widely. The orange trees require two factors to convince the apes to use the fruit. It needs to be obvious and it also needs to taste good and serve biological needs.

Did the tree invent language constructs according to a linguistic model, to evolve the orange? Did the apes invent a complex dictionary to describe the subtleties the orange color or the citrus flavor as they introduced their young to the source of food? No, you just know an orange when you see it. The signal for it’s ripest best taste is a singular color, you’ll figure it out after you eat a few.