Plant Dyes Part 2

So I know I’ve already written about plant dyes in a previous blog, but I just COULD NOT stop myself. My herbalist buddies got together again, focusing on plants that produce yellow dyes, and it was just amazing.

There is something powerfully miraculous about putting a couple of handfuls of what seem like ordinary leaves in a pot of hot water, only to see these rich, intense colors come seeping out into the water. After an hour of simmering, then we pull out the plants and put in some basic natural colored wool. Then the proteins in the spirals of wool pull in the plant pigments and viola! We have color.

I wonder how, in ancient times, our ancestors stumbled across these additional gifts from the plants? I imagine a scene in Africa, with a woman sinking down by the fire at the noon meal, with a cup full of hot tea. Her child bumps into her, and she spills the steeped tea all over her leather clothes. The colors sink in and cannot be removed and she suddenly sees that she doesn’t to wear leather tan and brown color for the rest of her life...

So back to our kitchen. The greenish yarn was made by goldenrod, which in late summer sends up spears of truly golden color shooting up into the blue sky of summer. Our herbalist friend Rain sheared off the tops of some goldenrod volunteering on her property and put them in the freezer. In the dyepot, this plany makes a pale golden color, which is “saddened” by iron water (mordant) and turns a rich green.

Then there is coreopsis, which most of us know as a sunny blossom smiling in the summer garden. It turns out it holds intense amounts of plant color. For much of August, I snuck out to garden with the pruners and collected flowers, adding them to the bag in the freezer until we had a full quart zip lock. In the dyepot, these flowers produced a rich caramel gold.

Finally we worked with turmeric. This may well have been the first dye ever used by humans. A root food and medicinal plant beloved in India, every cook knows about its ability to stain. We tried it three ways: the medium yellow is wool only, while the deep orange is turmeric+ alum mordant. (Alum helps the colors be washfast and light fast). Finally we added a bit of iron mordant to the dyepot; here you see Susan stirring the yarn which has become a yummy, nearly edible brown.

At the end of the day, the yarn is hanging outside, drying. In a few days Rain will recruit some friends to wind it all up into lovely balls of color. And soon, I have my share: I cannot stop fondling them. This is one of the best parts of working with plants: seeing up close, in my hands, their mystery, their medicine, their gifts. I share it with you all...


Janet Partlow
Resources: Wild Color by Jenny Dean