[NATURAL DYES] MADDER & WELD

NATURAL DYES come in a rainbow of colors — as long as you know where to look. Plants, lichens, shells, and even insects contain all the compounds you need to make any color from soft yellow, to electric pink, to forest green. Many natural dyes also respond well to nontoxic dye-fixing mordants, such as alum and iron.

This article is the first of a two-part series on plants from which you can extract natural primary color dyes; red and yellow are covered here, and the second half of this series, to be published in our Spring 2020 issue, will focus on making blue hues with indigo and woad.

RED: THE ROOT OF THE MADDER

Madder (), a perennial dye plant, displays clusters of small, yellow flowers in summer, and shiny, black berries in fall. Native to southern Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa, madder prefers loamy, moist soil, and plenty of sunlight. It offers a rambling groundcover, or grows like a vine with the right support. However, the plant’s best gifts hide underground; its medicinal roots