Mushroom Color Atlas
158 points by gaws 8 hours ago | 20 comments
  • steve_adams_86 7 hours ago |
    This is so incredible. My friend's mom loves dying wool with natural pigments (she even gets her wool from local alpacas!) and she'll go crazy for this. She has wanted a blue/green for a while and it turns out there's one that actually grows around us.

    Actually a lot of these mushrooms can be found around where I live. I'll have to go on some hunts before winter!

    edit: It would be cool to see something like this for other materials like barks and leaves. As teenagers we used to go around the woods finding her all kinds of weird stuff to dye things with... usually while hunting for our own mushrooms (not for dying things)

    • quitit 6 hours ago |
      https://www.mycopigments.com/ also does lichen, and has plenty of guides and resources.

      Just a heads up however to be mindful about toxicity of the mushrooms you select, however generally speaking the dyed end product is safe. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7277368/

      • steve_adams_86 6 hours ago |
        Right, lichens are a big one. Thanks for the link!
      • anonporridge 2 hours ago |
        Just don't eat any unless you're certain it's safe. You won't get poisoned just from touching any mushrooms.

        One interesting gotcha that regularly kills people, is that there are some look-a-like species between Eurasia and North America, where one is edible and the other is poison. Apparently is fairly common in Washington state for eastern European immigrants (cultures where mushroom foraging is common) to die this way, because they eat something that looks familiar to them.

    • nom 4 hours ago |
      FYI it is also available as a book!
    • TheGoodBarn 7 minutes ago |
      There’s a YouTube channel where a guy does this with his native flora, it’s pretty awesome:

      https://youtube.com/@justinthetrees?si=FCKrfjddLS7f8U2i

  • su 7 hours ago |
    Very cool website.

    My first thought when I saw these pigments was about wine colors. A similar website for wine, showing different hues, would be really interesting. It could show the range from light whites to deep reds and how each color matches the type of wine.

  • culi 7 hours ago |
    Brilliant website design. Blazingly fast and useful even while still loading
  • jboggan 7 hours ago |
    I have the book this site is based on and it's beautiful. My wife is a quilter and we plan to make a quilt from our local foraging.
  • archermarks 7 hours ago |
    This is super cool. As another commenter said, I'd like to see this for other natural dyes (onion skins, walnuts, etc).
  • Ccecil 6 hours ago |
    I made some Lichen dye from local shield lichen last spring. Still have it in a jar and need to test but it is supposed to be a reddish brown.

    Also, I processed a bunch of Black Walnuts this month and I hear if you save the water used in the processing it makes a great stain/dye. It seemed to stain the concrete really well on the porch where the squirrels were dropping a lot of the husks too.

    I will keep my eye out for the mushrooms needed this fall to do this method too.

    • antx 5 hours ago |
      Oh yeah, walnut is a great dye. No need for mordant, too. And everytime I drink nocino (an italian liqueur made with unripe walnuts), I'm wondering what my insides look like, haha!
      • Ccecil 40 minutes ago |
        Funny you mention it.

        I made Nocino back in June. Green walnuts kept falling and I said "I wonder what people do with these?" First 2 hits on a search were Nocino and pickled walnuts...I chose the former. :)

  • yogurtboy 5 hours ago |
    No notes, this is cool as fuck.
  • Theodores 5 hours ago |
    I wish more of the web was like this treasure trove. The nearest experience is a beautiful book.
  • sssilver 3 hours ago |
    The mushroom illustrations are gorgeous. Does anyone know what this style of drawing is called and where/how can one study it.
    • ljsprague 2 hours ago |
      I believe you would call that "pen and ink."
  • j_bum 2 hours ago |
    This is absolutely beautiful.

    I’m tempted to make a color palette out of this spectrum for my plotting library! A “fungi” palette