It grows mostly in the boreal forests. Apply the liquid mixture along with lichen powder and soil to a branch or rock. After two years, the fungus will form. Wolves and foxes especially die from this plant. Not Extinct-Keeping The Sinixt Way is a beautiful book filled with Sinixt stories and accompanying artwork by local Indigenous and settler artists. However, frost does not kill it. Wolf lichen is a yellow-green fungus that grows on trees and rocks. A funny saying that helps remember is “Freddie Fungus found Alice Algae and now their marriage is on the rocks.” This fungi grows as little as 1 centimeter or as large as twelve centimeters. I harvested a pocket full and hurried home to cook it into a dye bath. The dye bath was still quite pale so I decided to add my small fabric samples and leave it all in the pot to soak overnight. It is said that the wolf lichen has been used to poison wolves by putting it in food that was left in the forest for the wolves to eat. This lichen was very valuable to the Indian tribes. Eager to experiment with this dye I resumed my forging and I finally found a few clumps of it on a stand of trees while cross-country skiing. Marilyn had cautioned me not to overcook it as the color would be compromised by too much heat, so I heated it very slowly with water on the stove (windows open in December due to fear of the poison warning!) After a 30 minute heating the lichen had lost most of its chartreuse green color and looked more yellow, while the water had taken on the brilliant green hue. Wolf lichen is one of them, and has been used to stuff reindeer carcasses in order to poison scavenging wolves and foxes. Farmers mixed the powder with powdered glass and let the wolves eat it. The bright colours in these baskets are from Lichen and Oregon Grape root dyes and are still very bright to this day some 200 years after they were made! Please check out the following links for more on the book and podcasts/radio shows…. We work with the finest yarns sourced from small Canadian farms focusing on ecology and sustainability. It grows on dead or dying trees and stumps. They made the yellow quills into baskets. Wolf lichen grows on incense cedar bark. Different tribes also used it to make poison arrowheads. People often confuse this lichen with moss which it is not. About & Disclaimer | Terms | Privacy | Contact. The Klamath Indians dyed porcupine quills yellow. Sign up to get updates from our studio, promotions,and sneak peeks of upcoming products. It is possible to grow it. Colour: An Exploration of the Traditional Indigenous Plant Dyes in the Columbia Basin. If you do hold it down, you will get an incredibly painful stomache ache. The color began appearing in the water almost immediately…a pale and icy chartreuse that the camera couldn’t quite register. I will be headed to the museum very soon to appreciate the colours in those baskets and admire the dye skills of the Sinixt women who made them. Vulpinic acid comes from this fungus. Photo: Will Forte, I cooked up a pot of dye with the new wolf lichen and was again pleased with the outcome. Stravaigin Yarn Co. is a natural dye studio specializing in locally grown and wild harvested dye plants. The colour from this dye pot was more yellow and warm toned than the previous one. I think that I wasn't quite hiking to a high enough elevation when foraging for it the previous fall- made note of that in my research journal so I can find more this spring to experiment with again! Having grown up in the mountains of Southern BC, I recognized this stunningly bright lichen that forms on trees in the area. I tried various yarns and knit up a sample using wool from a local farm. *Special thanks to storytellers and knowledge keepers Marilyn James and Taress Alexis for their generous sharing of traditional Sinixt knowledge. The smell while cooking was absolutely lovely, sort of earthy and spicy. Wolf lichen is a yellow-green fungus that grows on trees and rocks. Please see previous post Oregon Grape, a traditional Sinixt dye  for more details on this project. Start with a mixture of flour and milk to stabilize the fungi. It usually does not grow well in coastal rain forests. It grows in older conifer forests at tree line. In 2017 I received a grant from the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance to research the traditional dye and textile plants used by the First Nations of the Columbia Basin area. Harvesting shenanigans! The Apache treasured it as a type of protection painting their feet with it as they walked into enemy territory. Wolf lichen grows on incense cedar bark. It grows mostly in the boreal forests. I wanted to experiment further with this dye right away. Natural dyes are always best when harvested at their peak and by the time I had my interview with Marilyn and Taress it was already Fall. I would consider this to be a weak dye (though the colour is brilliant) as a pocket full of lichen only dyed a few small fabric samples. Use it within two days. That’s okay. Wolf lichen (Letharia vulpina) is a toxic lichen. Marilyn and Taress warned me to be careful with this dye material as it is quite poisonous if ingested. Some people like the idea of having the beauty of the wolf lichen nearby. Wolf Lichen is poisonous, but it would take a bit to poison yourself. At our interview, Marilyn had told me the story of Coyote and Buffalo when I asked about the hides and leathers that the Sinixt used…it was very entertaining and often had me laughing at the antics of the trickster Coyote.