Madder is a perennial shrub that grows during the summer. In winter, the upper parts of the plant die, but in the spring, from its branching roots, new shoots appear. These can grow to five feet as crawling or climbing branches that have many small thorns on their square stems. The leaves grow in whorls of 4 to 6 , are lancet-shaped, 1/3 to 1 inch wide and 1 to 5 inches long. The inconspicuous flowers are yellow and develop pea-size deep violet to black berries. Madder thrives best on fertile, not too dry soil and has roots that grow more than three feet deep. The finger-thick roots contain the dyestuffs. These are anthraquinones, usually bound to a sugar (glucose), and therefore called glycosides. Anatolia was probably the original home of madder, but the natural distribution includes the Caucasus, Iran , western Central Asia as far as the northwestern Himalayas .In the course of hundreds of years of cultivation, the most important dye plant for red was brought to North Africa and Europe . The English or Portuguese then brought it to India . Despite its long cultivation, new species have not been developed. The cultivated madder is identical to the wild species that grow where it is endemic. Madder is still - or again - being cultivated in a few projects in Europe and Turkey . The European Union is supporting trial projects.Historical Data
Very fragile purple cotton fragments were found on two money bags in the excavations of Mohenjo-Daro ; old city in the valley of Indus , in Pakistan dated 3250 to 2750 B.C. In Egypt , alum mordant was not been found on a piece of flax dyed with the madder according to the previous analyses. The work carried out by Renate Germen recently shows that, the oldest examples of use of the madder was not mordanted by alum, textiles of Tel-el-Amarna dated from the 18th dynasty, gone back to approximately 1350 B.C. In 1930, the French Egyptologist Victor Loret had already pointed out that still under the 20th dynasty (1189-1069 BC), the plant was mentioned for the first time in the Lansing papyrus, was known only under its Semitic name and was perhaps imported to Syria or Palestine.Madder was known well and largely employed in Greek, Hellenistic and Roman worlds and it was used not only in dyeing but also in medicine and painting. Historian Herodotus of Halikarnassos (Bodrum) described its use as a dye for clothes in Libya . In the First dye trade document written in Greek, there is a record of trade in this root between India and Asia Minor . Pliny the Elder wrote that madder was grown near Rome during the first century AD. It eventually became a major item of trade between the Near East and Europe . Its cultivation developed parallel to the production of fabrics and spread to all around the Mediterranean area and Western Europe . It did not disappear with the fall of the Roman Empire, since trace was found in north of France and in Normandy at the late Middle Ages, under the reign of good king Dagobert, 629 to 638 AD, the English merchants brought to the fairs in Lendit in Saint-Denis close to Paris .The madder was also cultivated in Provence , in Languedoc , in the countries of Aragon Kingdom and in Lombardy . As early as 800 AD, Charlemagne recommended the cultivation of madder on his estates, but only at the Middle Age expands throughout Europe . Then the Arabs brought it again to Europe , to Moorish Spain (The old trading name for madder, "alizari", includes the Arabis article "al."). After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fourth century AD a little amount of madder was cultivated in Europe . The dye trade moved back to the Near East, and Baghdad became the most important center of dye trade. In eighth century madder plants were cultivated again.From the tenth century it was cultivated in Holland , and became the most advanced madder producer in the world. A large amount of imported and local madder used in England passed through Norwich . This city became the most important madder distribution point. A local thoroughfare is still called Madder Street and there is the Madder Market Theatre. The rise of drapery in many areas of Europe starting from 10th century involves in effect the parallel development of the cultivation of principal dye plants; Quantities of powder of madder necessary for draperies in the north of France stimulate obviously the local production in Lille and Ypres . The consumed and produced quantities are enormous, for example in Genoa, madder was purchased by thirty-seven dyers and companies between 1224 and 1295, only three of them purchased lower than 100 kg , twenty three of them exceeded 350 kg and three of them purchased 698 kg , 1045 kg , 1395 kg .May 15, 1235 , In the region of Tortona, 2,287 kg of powder of madder was sold to a Milanese. In the Muslim world, its cultivation was also very largely widespread: out of Syria , around Tripoli and Damascus , in upper Mesopotamia, in the Egypt oases, in Carthage and in Andalusia . But the two principal exporting areas were Caucasus and the Central Asia . According to the Arab geographer Ibn Hawqal, in 10th century, high quality madder was produced marshy islands of Caspian Sea and exported to until India . Until the beginning of 18th century India was the world supremacy in the field of the dyeing of cotton, consumed such indeed quantities of madder that it must also imported to the Middle East, not only by terrestrial, but also maritime way.Cultivation of madder was increased in Yemen , several observers mentioned about fleets of madder with the destination to India between 12th-16th centuries. In Europe, civil wars in 16th and in 17th century the madder was disappeared from France , its cultivation and trade monopoly was preserved until 1760 in Holland ; it was reintroduced to France in Alsace . But the madder is one of the dyeplants whose cultivation has to develop again in the current renewed interest for the natural dyeing. Madder needs a mordant to fix it, and alum which had been known to the Greeks, was certainly used in Turkey in the fifteenth century and exported to Italy . The colour, however, was duller than the bright red we associate with madder today.The brightest and most lasting dye derived from madder was Turkey red, long made by a secret process in the East and especially valued there because it dyed cotton. France was the main producer of madder in Europe into the 19th century. To protect the French producers from competition by the new synthetic dyes, until 1870, the government had soldiers' uniform trousers dyed red with madder, but this could not delay the demise of madder for long. In 1868, the German chemists Graebe and Liebermann discovered the formula of alizarin, the main dyestuff in madder. Only three years later, in 1871, alizarin was produced in large quantities (approximately 15 tons).In Europe, synthetic alizarin completely drove out madder but found little acceptance in the carpet-producing countries in Anatolia and near East. In all our numerous analyses of red dyes in rugs and flatweaves, only once did we find alizarin by itself, in a late Ottoman carpet manufactured in Hereke. In all other analyses, alizarin always found in conjunction with another madder colouring compound namely, pseudopurpurin. Synthetic alizarin disappeared gradually from the market after the turn of the century as other synthetic dyes for red were developed, which, apparently, were considered better. Today, synthetic alizarin is only produced in India , where it is used for printing cotton.
