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| Madder
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A madder plant in the open air museum Asparn, Austria | ||||||||||||
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The Common Madder can grow to 1.5 m in height. The evergreen leaves are 5-10 cm long and 2-3 cm broad, produced in whorls of 4-7 starlike around the central stem. It climbs with tiny hooks at the leaves and stems. The flowers are small (3-5 mm across), with five pale yellow petals, in dense racemes, and appear from June to August, followed by small (4-6 mm diameter) red to black berries. The roots are between 20-30 cm long, up to 12 mm thick and the source of a red dye. It prefers loamy soils with a constant level of moisture.
It has been used since ancient times as a red dye for leather, wool, cotton and silk. For dye production, the roots are harvested in the first year. The outer brown layer gives the common variety of the dye, the lower yellow layer the refined variety. The dye is fixed to the cloth with help of a mordant, most commonly alumFor alum meaning "graduate," see Alumn. Alum in chemistry, is a term given to the crystallized double sulfates of the typical formula MSO·MIII(SO)·24HO, where M is the sign of an alkali metal ( lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, caesium, or francium),. Madder can be fermented for dyeing as well (Fleurs de garance). In FranceThe French Republic or France ( French: Republique francaise or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents., the remains were used to produce a spirit as well.
The roots contain the acid ruberthyrin . By drying, fermenting or a treatment with acids, this is changed to sugar, alizarinAlizarin or 1,2-dihydroxyanthraquinone is the red dye originally derived from the root of the madder plant. In 1869, it became the first natural pigment to be duplicated synthetically. Its molecular structure is shown at right. Madder has been cultivated and purpurine . Purpurine is not coloured, but is red when dissolved in alcalic solutions. Mixed with clay and treated with alum and ammonic, it gives a brilliant red colourant ( madder lake).
The pulverised roots can be dissolved in sulfuric acid, which leaves a dye called garance (the FrenchFrench le francais la langue francaise is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered only by Spanish and Portuguese. French is the 11th most spoken language in the world, spoken by about 77 million people (called Francophones) as a mother to name for madder) after drying. Another method of increasing the yield consisted of dissolving the roots in sulfuric acid after they had been used for dyeing. This produces a dye called garanceux. By treating the pulverized roots with alcohol, colorin was produced. It contained 40-50 times the amount of alizarine of the roots.