Common reed, roseau commun, Schilfohre, carrizo, giolcach

I’d read about dyers obtaining a green colour on wool from the common reed, so was naturally eager to give it a try. The past two years I’ve missed a very short flowering season due to high temperatures, but this year managed to harvest some in its second flowering (the weather has been up and down like a yoyo).

On the way to a spot where it grows abundantly (and will need thinning very soon if it’s not to take over the shallows of the artificial lake), I started thinking about greens… Greens from purple… The local variety don’t have purple flowers, maybe a slight tinge, but nothing like I once saw in England. As a child with a thirst for natural history (is it still called that?) and a small but highly informative collection of nature books, I stood gaping at this tall grass with purple flowers – all very exotic. If memory serves correctly, I took a couple of flowering heads home, but the purple didn’t last. I can’t remember where it was, but have a lot of fond and grateful memories of day trips in to the countryside where there was always a new discovery.

So, back to Australia… some sources say the plant is native, others an introduced species… but it still lacks the purple. Well, at least I’d get a yellow or beige out of it, I was sure.

On the far left, the unmordanted yarn is very close in colour to its mordanted neighbour. The third from the left is mordanted + bicarb modifier – slightly more yellow in real life as was to be expected. On the far right is mordanted + Fe modifier. A useful experiment? Yes, and colours to add to a palette.