OK, I know that’s like saying I love roses.  Which roses?  Name specific species! Leaves or flowers?

Well, I don’t know more.  I harvested “mistletoe” from a forest reserve in Western Australia and used it experimentally on fabric.

Because it’s found on gum trees, its leaves look like the host species’ leaves.

Mistletoe on white paper

Close up of the mistletoe leaves

They have the same shape as their eucalyptus hosts but typically look redder and feel more waxy than the leaves of the gum trees they parasitise on.

I put a small number of these leaves into a cotton sheet derived bundle and brought it to the boil. I added a small skein of kid mohair to the pot and turned it down.  Later, I raise the temperature again , then turned it down.  Result: small kid mohair skein turned from white to light brown.

BUT! Over the next week, out in the winter cold the square of cotton sheet in which the mistletoe leaves were wrapped turned  lovely peach-orange colour!!!  So I tried heating the pot again, this time with some small skeins of different cotton yarns.

Cotton yarns drying in the sun before washing.

The yarns did fade with rinsing but are still a very pleasing colour.

Yarns and fabric after dyeing with mistletoe and after being rinsed and dried. At bottom is the kid mohair.  Top yarns and background fabric are cotton.

At some stage I will compare these outcomes with the outcomes I might get from pre-mordanting the cloth and fibres with, say, alum.  However,  to have these colours from untreated cellulose fibres,  which are notoriously more difficult to colour than silk and other protein fibres, is exciting.