Old Man’s Beard, Traveller’s Joy or Clematis Vitalba was an iconic part of traditional British hedgerows when and where I grew up. As kids we loved those hairy fronds that appeared around about the same time as blackberries. As a gardener however, too much of the old boy in the hedgerow is a pest.

I’m not alone in thinking this and clematis vitalba for all its charms has become regarded as an invasive species in some areas. Whilst native to the UK, in New Zealand it has been declared an “unwanted organism” and is listed in the National Pest Plant Accord and as such It cannot be sold, propagated or distributed. It’s a classic case of you can get too much of a good thing and this voracious climber just doesn’t know when to stop and will happily choke and shade other plants constituting a very real threat.  In New Zealand, as an introduced plant it hasn’t really had anything that fed off it, whilst in the UK where it’s native, there are moths for which it is their only food source.

Speaking of food source, apparently here in Italy, and Tuscany specifically, the new young shoots are eaten in omelettes – this was news to me and I though I should try it for myself, so watch this space…

Anyway back to the point. We have a traditional mixed hedgerow with blackthorn, dogwood, dog rose, arbutus, bay, buckthorn etc. to which we’ve recently added some hazel and it’s being overtaken by the Old Man’s Beard. So, it’s a perfect candidate for my natural dyeing experiments to see if there’s dye potential in something we have in plentiful supply. I don’t want to get rid of it altogether, just keep it under control.

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So my starting point was to see if anyone had tried it and if so, what results they’d had. I didn’t find a lot, but enough to spur me on – it’s easily done:

This Bohemian Wife had done some solar dyeing experiments to test potential with what she labelled ‘pink clematis leaf’ and had got a grey. I like grey, so despite being unclear whether the pink was referring to the leaf, they do darken later in the year, or whether it was variety of pink flowered clematis, my interest was further piqued, after all grey isn’t beige…

Paivi Suomi of All Fibre Arts got ‘a very nice yellow’ from and unidentified variety of clematis from this recipe. Yellow is good… it’s not beige.

Fran at Wool Tribulations got a ‘greenish yellow’ from her pink clematis – she helpfully included a picture of it and it’s a pink flowered clematis, a montana variety I’d say, and quite a stunner. Greenish yellow isn’t beige…

The final reference I found was by Sandra Heffernan of Massey University who, like This Bohemian Wife, was also based in New Zealand.  Heffernan had written a book chapter, available here, entitled ‘Novel Natural Colourants’ and was similarly inspired by the invasiveness of clematis vitalba, so just what I had been looking for. However, I have to say I found this piece a little confusing. Clematis vitalba is referred to as a lichen and lichen dyeing techniques are also referenced. There is a lichen called Old Man’s Beard, an Usnea but it’s not the same thing. The picture in chapter of the dyestuff residue could be lichen or could be clematis root, on balance I think it’s the latter and the lichen references are a little misleading. Most of the references are to invasive weeds and their environmental impact so I think we’re on the right track here. This chapter explains the process of heat extraction, mordanting and dyeing for both silk and wool. It doesn’t however explain which part of the plant was used, although the more I think about it, and based on that picture, I wonder if it was just root? Colours achieved on wool were golden peach (unmordanted), orange gold (alum mordant) dark sienna (iron mordant). These colours proved lightfast, especially those that had been mordanted. The dyed wool fabrics photographed were definitely orange, not beige…

So, I’m not sure that this research helped all that much, other than to increase the sense of nothing ventured nothing gained.

So this is what I did….

I cut back a section of the invasive old mans beard and stripped 330g of leaves and fleshy stems from the woody stems and vines and put them in a brown paper bag.