As long as I can remember, mushrooms and lichens enchanted me. They looked otherwordly and alien among the forest and fields. The past few years I’ve taken my interest in fungi and lichens by photographing and IDing ones I find on my hikes and walks. Mostly out of curiousity and wonder.
I found a couple articles months ago about using lichens and fungi as a dye source, you bet I was amazed. I found a couple good source books on what species are good dyes, and how the process varies from most other ways of natural dye. I have yet to experiment and get hands on learning with this new range of dye materials but I have begun to collect some.
Since lichens are such a slow growing organism, its widely considered unethical to collect lichens from trees and rocks where they are thriving. Its best to collect from fallen limbs. I’m thankful that the cherry trees in the backyard have many lichens growing on them, and a cherry tree being a cherry tree, they loose a lot of limbs every time the wind blows it seems. So I’ve been collectinf the fallen limbs for firewood, as I normally do, but taking the time to first harvest the lichens from them. Its a bit of work and I only get a small ammount of lichens at a time.
Now, getting into the mushrooms is a different story. With mushrooms, you must always be careful to properly ID them before dyeing because if you use a poisonous species, then the yarn or fabric you dye could leech those toxins out onto the wearer. I’m taking my time to ID them and so far I havent found any that are considered good dyers.
I will, of course, keep you updated with my experiments!