Alkanet

Dyer's alkanet is a herb of the borage family, native to the Mediterranean region and the Balkans and reaching east to Ukraine. Its stems sprawl along the ground, thick with hairy oblong leaves, and it bears small bright-blue flowers shaped like cups. The root is the prized part: dark outside and blue-red within, it gives a red colouring that dissolves in oil or alcohol but not in water, and like litmus it turns blue in alkali and crimson in acid. It has coloured cloth, cosmetics and wood since antiquity, staining furniture to imitate rosewood or mahogany, tinting salves in pharmacy and colouring cheap wines; its pigment, alkannin, was the food colouring E103, whose approval the European Union has withdrawn. The name comes from the Arabic for henna, which was sometimes used in its place. Pliny reported that the plant taken in wine lifted the spirits, medieval Europeans carried the root as a luck charm, and in hoodoo it goes into red fast luck oil. In magic it is burned as incense to cleanse a space of negativity and draw prosperity, and a piece of root is kept in a purse or wallet as a charm for prosperity and success.