Posts Tagged ‘Daphne’
harvesting colour – berries of Daphne
With the help of a friend, I have been able to add Daphne berries to my growing list of plant dye experiments. She invited me to harvest some of the berries from her Daphne bushes, before the birds ate them all. We spent an hour picking berries and catching up with one another. I went home with enough berries for my dye pot and some of her excellent photos of the Daphne berries.
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red berries on the bush (photo by L. Cogswell)
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close-up of Daphne berries (photo by L. Cogswell)
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Daphne’s beautiful crimson berries are poisonous, although the birds love to eat them. I was anxious to see what colour they would bring to my growing collection of home-dyed wool. I know from reading that the leaves and twigs of Daphne produce a yellow dye.
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In the dye-vat, the berries quickly lost their colour to the boiling water, making a pale rose-coloured dye.
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And the colour of the wool roving after an hour’s simmer in the pot? A lovely yellowish brown …
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pretty side of poison
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exotic, elliptic
berries among laurel
leaves droop vermillion
toxic pills, birds immune
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spirit of bubbling wells
and water-springs, Daphne
drupes in rainwater seethe
and berries leach rosy
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waters blush at this strange
use of poison, tint the
roving, wool lifts yellow
brown dye from the kettle
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scarlet Daphne berries
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
nichepoetryandprose 