IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
113 
NATIVE DYE-PLANTS AND TAN-PLANTS OF IOWA, WITH NOTES ON A 
FEW OTHER SPECIES. 
HARRIETTE S. KELLOGG. 
In early days, dyers depended almost entirely upon the vegetable kingdom as 
the source of their supply of coloring materials, the most important exceptions 
being sepia from a species of cuttle fish and Tyrian purple from the Murex. 
Feral plants were the chief reliance but the uncertainty of obtaining a sufficient 
amount of the raw material, as well as the inferior quality of much of that 
brought to the ma.rket, together with the development of the science ©f organic 
chemistry led to the replacing of natural dyes with synthetic or artificial dyes. 
In 1910, Prof. Meldola, in a presidential address before the Society of Dyers 
and Colorists, said, “Such a revolution in an industry of venerable antiquity 
as has been effected in about half a century has, perhaps, never been witnessed 
in the history of applied science. ... An ancient industry, at the touch of 
science has been transformed.” As a result of this change, today in our large 
manufactories, research chemists are employed as members of the regular staff. 
Another result is that aniline dyes derived from coal-tar products replaced the 
greater number of vegetable dyes, but two, logwood and fustic, not having, as 
yet, been supplanted. The substitutions have not been wholly satisfactory, many 
of the aniline dyes not being of sufficient permanency, and experiments have 
been continued until, at present, coloring principles are manufactured which 
are identical with the natural vegetable or animal principles formerly employed 
in dyeing, and moreover have these advantages over the natural products that 
they may be manufactured in unlimited quantity and be of as great purity or 
strength as the manufacturers chose to make them. 
Today, however, in the newer agricultural districts, encouragement is being 
offered to farmers to experiment with plants containing dye principles with the 
hope that careful methods of cultivation employed in growing these may again 
create a market for such plants, although it is not at all probable that collecting 
plants in their wild state will ever again possess commercial importance. 
Tannin is of much more usual occurrence in vegetation than are dye-principles; 
however, in many plants, it occurs in such negligible quantity or is so associated; 
with some coloring principle as to be without value to the manufacturer. How- 
ever this may be, it is true that most plants contain tannin. 
In early days in Iowa, especially before the advent of the railway, tannerS' 
in Iowa used native barks in their work. Mr. D. S. Morrison, senior member 
of a firm which has been manufacturing gloves in this state since 1854, says, 
that at first the black oak was used in tanning, but the coloring matter which, 
the oak contained made its use rather unsatisfactory so that eventually depend- 
ence was placed upon the sumac, although experiments were made with other 
plants, notably smartweed. This was probably the Tanweed, Polygonum Muhlen- 
hergii, which contains about four per cent of tannin. 
Appended are lists of tan and dye plants, native to Iowa, which are as com- 
plete as the resources at command will allow. It is of course impossible to. 
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