IV: Alkanet
A tiny flower made for dying cloth.
Good morning. Today is quartidi, the 24th of Messidor, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate l'orcanète, the flower we already met under the name bugloss.
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There's a fake alkanet floating around out there that will still do the job of manufacturing red dye, but less well and in an even more weedy fashion. It's known as bastard alkanet, or, more commonly, gromwell. While considered a field pest in North America, the European Union is investigating the plant for its potential to make a sustainable food oil.
One of the more popular varieties of bugloss is called dyer's bugloss, but is more well-known by its alternate name: alkanet. Like other bugloss, the flowers are a vivid blue, but alkanet has the chemical – alkannin – in concentrated doses throughout its circulatory system, so that when the roots are crushed up and dried, the resulting powder is a dye.
