Natural Dyes
   
     
           
  Madder  (rubia tinctoria) is a perennial herbaceous plant  native to temperate Asia and central Africa. There is evidence that madder has been used as a dye for at least four thousand years. Historically, dyers often jealously protected the special recipes that produced the beautiful enduring reds for which the root of this dyeplant is famous. Madder must be grown for at least three years before the roots can be dug and cured  for use as a dye. It is still used by some traditional fiber artists in India, Bhutan, and other Asian countries.
           
               
  Indigo (indigofera tinctoria) is the most widely used of the various indigo producing plants, although several others plants historically  provided clear, fast blues to dyers on all continents. Indigo plants provide the only natural blues that are reliable and abundant. Indigo is an unusual dye; the colour is obtained through a complex process of fermentation and oxygen reduction, and unlike other dyes, it does not bond with the fiber but remains on the surface dark indigo-dyed fabrics and wools will rub off, or 'crock' slightly when they are new, colouring the fingers of the artist working with them. Indigo is still used quite widely in Asia and Africa, and one important contemporary use is the dying of cotton for blue jeans.
 
Cochineal (dactylopius coccus) is a scale insect that lives on the prickly pear cactus (oppuntia) and is native to tropical and sub-tropical Mexico and South America. The lovely carmine reds, pinks are purples produced by these insects are intense, jewel-like, and very fast. Cochineal has been cultivated and used by indigenous artisans of the Americas for millenae  and when it was taken to Europe by the Spanish, became a commodity second in value only to gold. Today the traditional people of Southern Mexico still cultivate, harvest and use cochineal in their beautiful weaving.
               
           
  Osage Orange (maclura pomifera) is a tree native to the central United States and is now widely naturalized throughout the US and Canada, where has often been planted as a windbreak. The close-grained yellow wood produces bright shades of yellow, gold and orange, and was used by early settlers as an alternative to expensive imported dyes. Osage Orange wood was used by indigenous peoples to make superior bows, and is still used for that purpose.
           
               
           
  Fustic (maclura tinctoria) is a tree in the mulberry family, native to Brazil and the West Indies and now to be found from Mexico to Argentina. Fustic produces a range of fast, attractive yellows and golds and was extensively used from a bout 1600 until the decline of natural dyes in the mid-eighteen hundreds. Being both abundant and locally inexpensive it was revived as a useful dye during the First World War to die uniforms khaki. Fustic is now not used commercially.
           
               
           
 

Cutch ( acacia catechu) is an extract prepared from the catechu tree or khadir tree. Native to the Indian subcontinent, khadir has been used since ancient times as a spice with betel leaf. It is also important in aurevedic medicine, and a dye insect called lac is cultivated on it. Cutch is still much employed in the tanning process. It yields attractive shades of rosy brown on wool.