A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1083 entries
woad
Woad is a tall biennial of the cabbage family with a rosette of leaves in the first year, a cloud of small yellow flowers in the second, and hanging purple-black seed pods. Its leaves contain the same blue dye compound as indigo in a lower concentration. Getting the color out requires fermenting the leaves, which is a long and famously foul-smelling process.
Etymology
The word is Old English with relatives across the Germanic languages, which is a good indication of how long the plant has been in use in northern Europe. It belongs with madder and weld, both on this site, in the three-plant set that supplied nearly all the color in European cloth before the sea routes to Asia opened.
Notes
The trade was enormous and it collapsed fast. Toulouse was built on woad in the fifteenth century, and when Indian indigo arrived with a far stronger dye content, European growers had it banned in several countries on pain of death, which held the market for a while and then did not. Caesar’s account of Britons painted blue is usually attributed to woad, though the text does not name the plant and the identification is an assumption.