Yellow dye plants

1 Weld, 2 Dyer’s Greenweed, 3 Dyer’s Chamomile
October 2025

Three of the types of plant in the colour wheel were used for dyeing wool yellow: weld (also known as dyer’s rocket), dyer’s greenweed (aka dyer’s broom) and dyer’s chamomile; remarkably the last of these has been flowering continually since last summer.

February 2026

In early summer you will also start to see lovely tall spikes of weld flowers, which can be harvested early on along with the leaves for dyeing. The greenweed, which grows as a tall broom-like shrub has a similar flowering period to weld (June-September), but again is best cut in June/July for dyeing. While flowers of dyer’s chamomile can be harvested throughout the flowering period.

Teresinha’s Wild Colours web pages give really useful information about dyeing with all three and show the different hues you can expect: eg lemon yellow with weld, but a warmer yellow with dyer’s chamomile.

The yellow colourants are various flavonoids and in particular luteolin, which is relatively light-fast. As with other dyes, mordants will modify the colour, so, for example, alum gives a brighter yellow while iron gives shades of green/brown. Different greens can also be produced by over-dyeing with woad: Lincoln green from weld-dyed wool, Kendall green from dyer’s greenweed and Saxon green from dyer’s chamomile.

There are useful dye recipes and colour charts in Jenny Dean’s book Wild Colour, Octopus Publishing 1999.