Category Archives: Dye Plants

November 15, 2012 · 9:30 am

Ironbark identification saga continues

I’ve been working my Eucalypt identification skills overtime and discovered that there are at least 3 dark-barked (by which I mean their trunk bark is brown to grey to black) types of ironbark growing as street trees in my area.  The main two seem to be E Tricarpa and E Sideroxylon, but it appears I also have E Corynodes.  One of the reasons I’m feeling some confidence is because of the results I have had from the dye pot:

In order of appearance:

E Citriodora–not an ironbark, just for comparison!–(Goodwood); E Tricarpa (Goodwood); E Tricarpa (Black Forest)

E Corynodes (Black Forest); E Sideroxylon (Goodwood); E Sideroxylon (a different tree, in Goodwood)

I would have to say that the dye results are more consistent than my perception of the appearance of the trees! One happy outcome of paying more attention is that I have observed that at this time of year E Tricarpa (and some E Sideroxylons) have tiny buds in formation among the fresh young leaves, and this enables a confident identification as between them. E Tricarpa has buds grouped in threes and E Sideroxylon has buds grouped in sevens.  Sometimes fruits are so high in the tree I can’t tell, and sometimes the sample I am able to reach has umbels where some fruits have broken off but I can’t be confident how many.  So this discovery is a help to the person trying confidently to tell them apart–me, for instance.

E Tricarpa (see those tiny buds-in-formation?):

E Sideroxylon:

I need to go a little further afield to consider other variations on the theme, but for now I think I will consider wider-leafed ironbarks to be types I don’t know well, rather than assuming they are E Sideroxylon with a better supply of water and nutrients.  You know what they say about assumptions!

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November 6, 2012 · 2:35 pm

Let the ironbark identification and dyeing experiments begin!

This tree is growing on the tram route in Goodwood.  It is clearly an ironbark, but I am less certain it is E Sideroxylon, and thus, I chose to investigate further… There are three ironbarks in a little cluster at this spot.  I think one of them is the same species and the other is so tall and branches so many metres above the ground that I may never know.

Here is the key feature of an ironbark: deeply furrowed bark which is impregnated with a sticky saplike substance (kino) which the tree produces in an effort to fend off attack by insects.

Here, more of a sense of the whole tree.  It is a very tall tree… and while the trunk might be secure from predatory borers, the leaves showed penty of signs of lerp and caterpillar attack.

The upper branches were paler, more of a cream colour, and covered in smooth bark which had begun to shed.  We had a very overcast day, but sometimes a natural dyer can’t wait!

The leaves smelled rather lovely while cooking.  I didn’t imagine when I set out on this dyeing path that cooking eucalyptus leaves smelled different, except in the obvious case of ‘lemon scented’!  They do though.  Some smell quite spicy and some smell like classic Eucalyptus oil.  E Crenulata was so overpowering it was voted out of the house for all future time.

As for identifying features, I collected plenty of leaves but could not reach any mature fruit.  Since this tree is growing among others that may not be the same species, picking fruit up from the ground sometimes just confuses the picture.  There were no visible buds or flowers–so, there are some limitations on identification.  Just the same, this tree appeared to bear fruit in pairs and threes (and not the classic 7 flower umbel of E Sideroxylon).  Tentatively, Euclid, hampered by my inadequacies in providing accurate observations, and the limitations in the data available, gives me E Tricarpa.

Here is the outcome of my dye sample (hemp/wool blend on the left and and wool on the right on each sample card).  E Citriodora on the left and E Tricarpa (tentatively identified) on the right… equally unexciting to my way of thinking.

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November 5, 2012 · 7:09 pm

Ironbark experiments: E Corynodes

On the weekend, I went to a fete at Black Forest Primary School.  They had a sensational community garden, complete with a sale of silkworms, 5 for a dollar!  Who could resist?  Clearly not me (you guessed), so there are 5 silkworms in the lounge munching through mulberry leaves.  More on that later.

While my posse of friends and my house guests from Denmark were hitching up their bikes, I took a sample of the tree right at the dead end of Kertaweeta Ave Black Forest where we entered the school grounds, with the help of a taller friend.  Excuse the extra good photo….

This tree had smooth, pale bark in some of the finer upper branches.

I don’t know why, but I do not entirely trust the result that Euclid and I produced: E Corynodes.  Poor Euclid, depending on me.  There were no mature fruits, buds or flowers to consider, and that makes the result less dependable and the chance of detecting an error smaller. Euclid suggests E Corynodes can be confused with several other species, but look at this account of how to tell them apart!

E. fibrosa subsp. fibrosa, E. fibrosa subsp. nubila, E. melanophloia and E. rhombica … differ in having buds with stamens all fertile and irregularly flexed.  E. sideroxylon differs by having buds that hold the outer operculum into maturity and both the inner and outer operculum shed together at anthesis (no operculum scar).

So that would be obvious, then!  Based on this I wonder how I can be sure this is not E Sideroxylon, which would give orange too…  Because whatever its true name, this is the result I got.

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November 5, 2012 · 12:14 pm

Eucalyptus Torquata: Leaf Prints and Modifiers

Remember my modifier experiment?  I have two jars of wonder, based on Jenny Dean’s instructions.  One contains offcuts of copper pipe from my Dad, vinegar and water.  It’s been steeping for months.  My first effort at iron water didn’t work out as I’d hoped, more like a science experiment!  This one is based on my friend’s collecton of bent nails.  He has been turning pallets into furniture, so he has removed a lot of nails.  They got left out in the rain and, bless him!  He thought of me.  Here they are, left to right:

Mystery Science Experiment, Rusty Nail Water, Copper Pipe Water.

Here are my E Torquata samples on hand spun wool and commercial wool/hemp blend:
Unmodified at the top, Iron modifier next, Copper modifier at the bottom.  I have to admit, this isn’t a deeply exciting result.

And here are my E Torquata leaf prints on recycled linen (the darker one was the side against the cast iron pipe):

Here are the prints from my ‘is it E Scoparia?’ experiment.  The answer is a tentative ‘yes!’  Recycled linen on the left, recycled silk on the right.  I included the very young, soft, green foliage you can see printed toward the bottom partly because I have been asked whether it is true you need to use young foliage to get good leaf prints.  My experience is that you don’t (though of course, you can).

Finally… a gratuitous photo of an E Torquata flowering very pinkly in a car park in my place of work.  One of my co-workers came out of the building to see me with a pile of papers in one hand and my phone in the other, and said: ‘What are you doing, Mary?’  As you would, really.

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November 3, 2012 · 10:19 pm

Ironbark Mystery

This week I found some E Sideroxylon trees in a park with lots of low hanging leaves… too tempting.  So I harvested some.  I brought them home and made leaf prints.  I have obtained strong oranges from these leaves in the past, so imagine my surprise when I unwrapped them and saw this:

This is on the silk-faced side of a hemp and silk blend.  It did confirm for me that the silk-faced side should be the right side.  Here, on hemp-cotton blend:

Disappointed, I considered the possible reasons.  Perhaps those pipes were not cast iron but something else?  I didn’t think so. I re-checked that I still have my cast iron pipes stored separately from my welded steel pipes… yes.  Hmmm.  But then I checked the dye pot using the same leaves, that I was cooking at the same time as the leaf prints.  And the wool was barely tan, almost no colour at all.

So, the metal content of the pipe is not the explanation.  The leaves that had been cooking for 3 hours or more were still green looking.  The dye liquor was barely tan.  I would expect the leaves to be orange and the dye liquor to be strongly coloured.

What could explain this?  I went back to my sample cards to check I really had ever had success with E Sideroxylon and there were my samples, bright orange.  There are a lot of variables in natural dyeing, and season or rainfall or soil could make a difference, but surely not this much of a difference.  The most plausible reason is that this tree was not E Sideroxylon, and that when I have had perplexing results in the past, they have also been caused by using a different species.  So, I consulted my most detailed and sophisticated Eucalypt resource, Euclid.  This is a database of Eucalypts created by the CSIRO, an Australian government-funded scientific research organisation.  Euclid is an amazing tool, but when using it to identify a Eucalypt, an accurate result depends on accurate observations of the tree in question–so user error is still possible.

When I began learning about Eucalypts, I couldn’t tell an ironbark from a stringybark (for those still in this position, please accept my assurance that the difference is quite profound once you grasp it).  I finally worked this out when I tryed dyeing with E Melanophloia and got nothing.  Almost no change in colour.  I thought it was E Cinerea, which has a great reputation as a dye plant.  Well, Melanophoia is a pale trunked ironbark and Cinerea is a stringybark.  They do both have rough, deeply furrowed bark and silver grey heart or round shaped leaves and white-cream flowers, and there the similarity ends!

So… perhaps I am about to move my understanding of Ironbarks up a few notches.  Euclid and my observations reduced the number of possibilities down to 7 (from a possible pool of over 900 Eucalypts).  The plausible candidates are: E Rhombica; E Fibrosa subsp Nubila (Blue Leaved Ironbark); E Decorticans; E Fibrosa subsp Fibrosa (Broad leaved Red Ironbark) and, of course, E Sideroxylon.  I think E Fibrosa subsp Fibrosa is my front-running candidate… it looks very much like E Sideroxylon to me on Euclid even now my suspicions are raised.

Next thrilling update whenever I reach some new insight!  Unfortunately none of these new possibilities are in my ready reference (a book), so I may be observed under trees in the neighbourhood with my laptop in hand.  Well, it won’t be the first time.

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November 1, 2012 · 9:48 pm

Eucalyptus Torquata

This is E Torquata, the Coolgardie Gum.  In my area it is a popular street tree.  It is a relatively small gum tree with a showy lovely flower and distinctive bud caps.  Being native to Western Australia, it tolerates the dry conditions that a street tree in Adelaide can expect to have to manage.

I find Coolgardie Gum easy to identify. When I was a child we lived in the goldfields in WA where this tree is from.  We lived in Kalgoorlie for a while, and this tree grew there as well as over to Coolgardie, which we used to visit.  The other town Wikipedia mentions as within its range is Widgiemooltha.  When I was a kid you could hardly call Widgiemooltha a town, but there was a dam there that someone had set goldfish free in.  We went there once and came home with 15 goldfish, all different!  It was a fantastic day out, picnic plus new pets–what more could a young person want?  We used to break the beak off the bud caps from this tree and string them to make necklaces.  They are distinctive.

This particular tree has relatively yellow flowers, but most nearby have flowers that are closer to orange.  There is a big infrastructure project happening in my suburb soon, and some of the local trees are going to go, including this one.  So I decided to harvest a little.  I have tried it as a dye plant before and I wasn’t impressed (I don’t invest time in natural dyeing with the intention of gettng tan), but I know someone who has achieved green from this tree using modifiers.  These leaves are destined for my sample pot.  I’m aiming to try them with modifiers myself.  I have some rusty-nail-iron-water and some copper-pipe-water, and I’m finally going to try them out.

I have also wrapped up some leaves sandwiched between some recylced silk and some recycled linen to see what happens.  I also put some samples in from some trees I found near a friend’s house in another part of the city just in case they are E Scoparia… the leaf shape and bark are right, the number of valve sin the fruit is right, the flower colour is right, and the bark is colouring up the way the ones in my neighbourhood are, but I trust the dye pot more than I trust my capacity to identify Eucalypts.  I’ve cooked my leaf bundles for 3 hours and I’ll unwrap in a day or two.

While I’m on the topic of Eucalypts that don’t have long to live… RIP this beautiful Corymbia Citriodora (Lemon Scented Gum).  At the community information day on the weekend I was told it would be cut down this week or next.  Right now it is in full bloom.  There are thousands of bud caps showering down and the road is covered in a dusting of yellow stamens.  Lorikeets are screeching and flying in and out of that tree all day long.  They start before I’m out of bed in the morning.

Farewell beautiful trees.

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October 23, 2012 · 7:56 pm

Introducing Eucalyptus Scoparia

Finally today a friend from my Guild has been able to tell me the name of some of my favourite dye Eucalypts.  Here is one example: Eucalyptus Scoparia (Wallangarra White Gum).

I love these trees, and they are fabulous dye plants. I feel lucky to have several in my neighbourhood! If you’ve been following this blog you’ve met three of the four I have foundnearby: (October 4; September 5; August 22 2012).  Here’s a bag I made with E Scoparia leaf prints on cotton, using a sea water and soy mordant and cast iron:

And this is a corespun yarn.  I carded merino dyed with E Scoparia bark with dyed mohair locks and dyed silk and corespun it over a crossbred wool core.

Thanks to E Scoparia, and thanks to Helen for organising an identification for me!

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October 4, 2012 · 9:31 pm

Neighbourhood dye plant for this week

This is another of my favourite dye plants, and another Eucalypt that is as-yet-identified.  It has very fine leaves and a lovely weeping habit. I’ve used it to create tablecloths with leaf prints cascading across them.

For much of the year the trunk is white to grey, and then as it enters the period of the year when it sheds its bark, pinks and reds begin to appear. It looks like I’ll be visiting again soon to collect bark.

When I visited today there were several generations of fruit as well as white flowers on the tree. I had a very funny visit to this tree last year.  I pulled over on my bike and was harvesting when people pulled up in the driveway next to it.  I greeted them, since there was no way to pretend this wasn’t happening.  They were glad I was trimming the tree and explained that they thought the council should be pruning it more diligently.  I offered to come back and prevent it hanging over the footpath and they were enthusiastic, so I came back with a friend, secateurs, a chook food sack and a milk crate a few days later.  Very funny!  There was I being selective and taking little… until we went back and took a sackful of leaves, which have lasted through the winter.

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September 18, 2012 · 1:37 pm

The end of the Royal Show… and some show and tell

Well, my attempts to keep our saltbush plants from being trampled had partial success.  The bunting was apparently attractive enough that it was stolen several times (but survived gale force winds for a couple of days).  I had initially planned to make very time consuming and beautiful bunting, and there are great tutorials for making it online.  Then, as I contemplated the enormity of the task, a friend told me she would just take her overlocker to each triangle and then overlock the triangles into a strip and that she had success doing this in the past.  I decided that I’d take this lower fi approach, and it was a great use of some of my huge stash of bias binding (which I used to join the triangles on some strips) and some fabric that I bought as offcuts from bedsheet manufacturing years ago.

It took plenty of time to make metres and metres of it anyway and I was glad not to have made over engineered loveliness for this particular application, especially once so much of it was stolen!  After I had replaced about 4 metres of bunting once I was dismayed to find that it had gone within a day.  And, the antique overlocker my grandma gave me when her eyesight reached the point where she hadnt been able to use it for years had a hissy fit and needed to go off to be repaired.  This is unusual.  That overlocker is a workhorse and has responded to irregular maintenance for many years.  My grandma died years ago but I often think of her while using her very dependable machine.

So, in short, the last replacement piece of bunting is extremely low fi… triangles zig zag stitched onto a piece of recycled cotton thread I rescued from a sad old jumper.  However, with one day of the show left to go, it was still there when I went to pick some leaves from the tree, and I found two geckos living under bark at the base of the tree when I checked under it for white ants (sadly, evidence of white ants as well as geckos).  I’ve never seen lizards on this tree before, so this was very exciting!

Here, finally, are my three braids from the twice-run  Eucalyptus dyepot.  I am not sure that the extra-long heating time has made any difference at all, but the low heating temperature has retained the softness of the roving very well.

 

Meanwhile, I have sieved out all the leaves and bark, added more dried leaves and my smallest piece of iron pipe, applied heat, and we’ll see how that goes… Finally, here is another tea cosy.  It’s made from merino dyed with Eucalyptus–for the orange– and Silky Oak (Grevillea Robusta)–for the yellow– with felted shapes spun into the yarn.  Once again, this is based on the Fun and Fast tea cozy by Funhouse Fibers.

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September 15, 2012 · 3:51 pm

Dyeing with Eucalypts

I began the process of dyeing I’m finishing this weekend months ago by collecting the bark of some of my favourite dye trees when they shed their bark.  I don’t muck around when making the most of this resource that the council and other people in my suburb will treat as rubbish if it lands on a footpath.  I take a chook feed sack if there is a lot of bark, as you can see.  Otherwise, I take a shoulder bag with me when I’m out and aboout and just pick up bark bit by bit as it falls to the ground.  There are four trees nearby which have bark which gives a lot of colour.

I discovered this quite by accident when I was experimenting with mordanting cotton one year. I couldn’t figure out where I would get tannin to apply to my fabric.  Then I thought… why buy tannin online and have it transported all the way to my house when Eucalypt bark is rich in tannin and I have it lying on the ground less than a block from my front door?  Imagine my surprise when I heated my pot of bark and saw the water turn deep orange within an hour!  I haven’t stuck with using this method to mordant cotton, but I use it for great colour on wool.

First, I soaked the bark for 48 hours.  I don’t think 48 hours is a magic number, but it is more than enought to wet the bark through.  Then, I brought the pot to the boil and kept it simmering for 2 1/2 hours.  I like to develop the colour in the dye bath without subjecting the wool to heat for so long, especially because my burners are difficult to control and default to a rolling boil rather than any more subtle temperature.

Then, I removed enough bark to allow my wool to move freely and put 25g merino roving into the pot. Sometimes I leave more bark in the pot, because it can produce contact prints on yarn or roving and this can be a lovely effect.  I like to plait the roving because it produces interesting variegation–not just different shades, but different colours–and a semi solid yarn once spun.  Even though this is a huge pot crammed with bark, I’m using a little wool because this gives the best chance of a burgundy… but no guarantee!  I can add more wool for orange or tan later.  Today, I have left the pot steaming but without heat for an hour, then applied heat for 15 minutes, and now another hour without heat.  I’m always happy if I can find a way to save energy… less heat will reduce the chance of felting (or just turning the wool harsh), and I am not convinced that a lot of cooking the wool itself improves the colour.  Well, that’s the theory.

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