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JOUENAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



BRITISH DYE-PLANTS. 

 By Dr. Plowright. 



The dye-plants of our own country have long ceased to possess any 

 general interest. The introduction of foreign dyes, superior in colour and 

 in many cases in durability, during the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 

 turies rapidly displaced the native dye-plants, except in certain specially out- 

 of-the-way localities, such as the Highlands of Scotland and certain parts of 

 Ireland, where they are still employed. We owe to the broad-mindedness 

 of Linnfeus a record of such native dye-plants as were in use in Sweden 

 and the North of Europe during the first-named period. In his " Amceni- 

 tates Academicae " he published a paper by E. Jorln, of Upsala, containing 

 an enumeration of the plants in question. In Withering's ** Systematic 

 Arrangement of British Plants," numerous interesting notes are appended 

 to the descriptions of many species. Amongst these notes one finds 

 recorded their tinctorial properties. This information appears largely to 

 have been derived from the Amoinitates," but by no means entirely ; for 

 quotations from Lightfoot's " Flora Scotica " (1777), Pennant's " Tours 

 in Scotland" (1782), and Rutty's "Natural History of the County of 

 Dublin " (1772) are also made. The fourth edition of Withering's work, 

 published in four octavo volumes (1801), enumerates some fifty species as 

 possessing tinctorial properties. During the past two seasons, 1900 and 

 1901, I have, with the help of many botanical friends, who have aided me 

 by collecting material, put to the test of actual experiment about sixty 

 reputed dye-plants, the results of which I have the honour of submitting 

 to the Scientific Committee.* The object in view was, not so much 

 to test exhaustively the capabilities of these plants by the aid of modern 

 mordants, as to see what colours they would produce with such simple 

 chemicals as were available by our ancestors some two or three centuries 

 ago, when home-spinning and home-dyeing were carried on in every house 

 in our country districts. These substances were, first and foremost, alum 

 (a salt known to Pliny), copperas (sulphate of iron), pearlash, ammonia, 

 and lime. These sixty plants have yielded some 150 varieties of colour, the 

 specimens of which are before you, arranged, not as a dyer would arrange 

 them, according to colour, but botanically, in their natural orders. 



It will be seen at a glance that some shade of yellow is the most fre- 

 quent colour the wools have taken. In the majority of cases this is 

 probably due to xanthophyl, and is of doubtful stability. In conducting 

 these experiments it was noticed again and again how almost every green 

 plant, when boiled with the wool, gave it a yellow colour on the addition of 

 alum as the mordant. It seemed as if the alum analysed the chlorophyll 



* This paper was illustrated by a most interesting exhibit of three very long 

 series of 150 skeins of wools dyed with native dyes. The paper unavoidably loses a 

 little of its interest and much of its attractiveness by the impossibility of reproducing 

 all the colours, tints, and shades obtained. It must suffice to say that the general 

 tone and effect of the various dyes was very distinctly and beautifully in the direction 

 of what may be best described as High-art shades. — Ed. 



