ECONOMIC USES OF LICHENS — LLANO 413 



is prepared, gypsum or powdered chalk is added and then cast into 

 small, purplish-blue cubes, once sold as lacunus. This, dissolved in 

 water and soaked up in unsized paper, was retailed as litmus paper. 

 This early product was rather unstable and tended to become colorless. 

 The action is thought to be due to micro-organisms, so that alcohol or 

 chloroform was often added when the litmus was stored in liquid form. 

 Tincture of cudbear was still used in the drug trade up to 1942 when 

 the Dutch source of supply was no longer available and the U. S. 

 Pharmacopeia recommended a coal-tar derivative, amaranth. 



Carlos Tavares (Portugal) has informed the author that "in some 

 regions of our country lichens are yet employed for dyeing clothing ; 

 I think Loharia pulmonaria one." A specimen of Usnea dasypoga 

 from Ecuador collected by Inez Mexia (7913) bears the annotation 

 "a brown dye is made by boiling with lemon." A report (3b) of 

 Australian aboriginal names and uses of plants indicates that lichens 

 were not used in the native economy. 



The chemical properties of dye lichens are better understood today 

 because of the studies of the workers, previously listed. A compre- 

 hensive survey of lichen compounds may be found in Thorpe's 

 Dictionary of Applied Chemistry, 4th ed., vol. 7, p. 284. 



COSMETICS AND PERFUMES 



History. — Since the sixteenth century, or earlier, members of the 

 families Cladoniaceae, Stictaceae, Parmeliaceae, and Usneaceae have 

 been utilized as raw materials in the perfume and cosmetic industries. 

 At first this use consisted of drying and grinding the plants to a powder 

 and combining them crudely with other substances, but as the manu- 

 facturers became more expert in their trade, these materials were skill- 

 fully combined into toilet powders, scented sachets, and perfumes of 

 real value. Three lichens commonly used were Evernia prunasfri, 

 E. furfuracea^ and Lohana piilmonaria., which have similar aromatic 

 substances. The trades recognized these lichens under a variety of 

 names, as Lichen quercinus viridis, Muscus arboreus, acaciae et 

 odorante, Eichenmoos, and, more commonly, as Mousse de Chene or 

 oak-moss and scented-moss. Ramalina caUcaris Fr. was used in place 

 of starch to whiten hair of wigs and perukes. Cyprus powder, a 

 combination of E. pmnastri, Anaptychia ciliaris, and Usnea species, 

 was scented with ambergris, or musk, and oil of roses, jasmine, or 

 orange blossoms for use as a toilet powder in the seventeenth century 

 that would whiten, scent, and cleanse the hair ( 19) . After a somewhat 

 lengthy eclipse, these plants reappeared as raw stuffs for perfumery, 

 owing to the creation of scents with a deep tone and to the demands 

 for the very stable perfumes of modern extraction, to which purposes 

 they are almost universally applied to this day. 



