Our vegetable garden is largely given over to edibles but we've saved one corner for this yellow-flowered plant with interesting historical connections. This is woad, from which dye - blue not yellow - was extracted for Celtic warriors to paint their faces with in times of war. The idea was to try to put off the other side, whether they be Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Normans or English. The blue-green leaves hint at the colour within but it is only released after the plant is steeped in an alkaline solution. There is also a process involving making the woad into balls and leaving bacteria to do the work. The dye, indigo, would also have been widely used to colour fabric right up until the mid-19th century, when synthetic dyes took over. Today there has been something of a revival in the use of natural plant-based dyes in craft fabric making.
Woad is immortalised in the traditional song Ancient Britons:
What's the good of wearing braces
Vests and pants and boots with laces
Spats or hats you buy in places
Down in Brompton Road
What's the use of shirts of cotton
Studs that always get forgotten
These affairs are simply rotten
Better far is woad
Woad's the stuff to show, men
Woad to scare your foemen
Boil it to a brilliant hue
And rub it on your back and your abdomen
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