Frog Blanket aka Lungwort

Lungwart (Lobaria pulmonaria) is a lichen known in the Gitksan language as gwilahl gana’w or frog blanket. As frog blanket is clearly a better name, I vote we use this instead. Frogs are amazing but I digress.

While it grows plentifully here in the forests of the southwestern British Columbia coast and is not of conservation concern, it is in decline is other areas of the world and should not be harvested. In some regions it is a designated of conservation concern and carries legal protection. Detecting its presence can also be used as an indicator of a healthy older forest with clean air.

TLDR: 62 grams of fresh lichen, 30 grams of white wool. Wool was pre-mordanted with alum because that’s what I had on hand. I understand that this lichen that an alum mordant or not does not alter the final product (but I have not tested this yet).

I collected the small amount pictured here off of a local gravel path following a wind storm. I created a small wool skein (30 grams) for this dyeing episode in order to try for a deep colour without having to collect more lichen. Finding it on the path carried a sense of it being a gift from the forest to try out some dyeing. There is so much to celebrate and appreciate about the forests and its First People.

Step 1: Clean and Chop

After getting the lichen home, I weighed it (62 grams fresh), before rinsing off the dirt and sand from the path and proceeded to chop it up in the pot. Usually 2:1 weight ratio of fresh mushroom or lichen to wool gives good colour so I made a skein of 30g of white wool yarn and soaked it in room temperature tap water.

Step 2: Into the Sack

As usual, I added the pre-wetted fiber into a 5 Gallon painters mesh bag (these are available at most paint shops and are inexpensive). This is hte easiest way I’ve found to separate the fiber from the botanical material in the dye vat. Laziness wins! I proceeded to bury the bag under the lichen pieces and began to heat the vat.

Step 3: Keep checking

According to lichen and mushroom dye expert Alissa Allen (mycopigment.com), lichens respond to repeated heat applications by stacking their colour (i.e., the colour deepening after each heating). Accordingly, I set about alternating simmering (2-3 hours) with cooling periods over three days. I never let it boil, but other than occasionally turning the wool over and giving it a poke with a chop stick, I pretty much left it alone.

Step 4: Monitor the colour

I wasn’t in a rush, so after the coolings, I took some time to untie the bag and have a look at the colour. Over time, it changed from a tan to a more luminous orange/brown.

Step 5: Once You’re Happy with the Colour…

After about three days, I really liked the shade of rufus brown and I pulled out the skein and gave it a rinse. Another piece of the frog blanket had come down from the tree so I collected it for this photograph and then put it back into the forest to dissolve into nitrogen and other component parts for plants.

Rufus Brown

Thank you frog blanket for being so beautiful and giving us these amazing luminous shades of orange and brown.