The great seed collection

12000 Ft

  • 20 + 1 packets of organic dye plant seeds
  • Grown by Botanika
  • ‘North’, ‘South’,  ‘East’, ‘West’ in one box
  • With sowing and growing user guide

Annatto /Bixa Orellana/

Annatto is a water-demanding shrub that is sensitive to temperate climates and can be grown under greenhouse conditions. The dye constituent of the achiote, ‘Orléans’ or ’lipstick tree’ is ‘petit teint’, i.e. a less permanent ‘unfast dye’. The characteristic peach-orange shade is yielded by the fleshy skin of the ripe seeds shelled from the fruit. It prefers neutral or slightly alkaline soil. It can be harvested from the age of one and a half to two years.
Now, we must return to the very beginning for a little while. The charming botanical synonym of this tropical evergreen, used in some places, is in fact the legacy of a slight cultural misconception.The 16th century conquistador Francisco de Orellana, who was the first to sail across the Amazon, brought news of the ‘shrub‘ and its strange fruit held in high esteem by the Indians. After his namesake, the ‘seed of Orellana’ easily resonated to European ears with the well-known Loire settlement, so the new dye plant became known here and there as Orleáns on the old continent. Further confusing the imagined worldview of the European man were the tales and myths of the New World that percolated through the records of Spanish and Portuguese missionaries following in Orellana’s footsteps. Already in Jesuit accounts, the ‘onoto’ of the Guyanese Palikurs as an ancient funerary ritual, the ‘achiotl’ or ‘shining seed’ motif of the Náhuatl as well as the central theme of the Pai-Cayá and Chiripá belief systems, ‘the eternal shrub that grows along the path to paradise’, appear from time to time.
However, with the gradual expansion of the conquered territories, it became clear that annatto was a universally sacred plant for Amazonian peoples all along the headwaters of the great rivers. It is not only a magical symbol with religious power, but also a symbiosis of everyday life. An inseparable element of health, integrity, safety and strength in the indigenous traditionally fishing, hunting and gathering way of life. Like so many other novelties – as a medicine ointment, an antidote, an antioxidant, a food colouring and, above all, as a versatile dye and cosmetic – annatto quickly made its way onto the colonialists’ wish list. Its preparation was first described by the Spanish explorer of the Yucatán, Francisco Hernandez in 1552:

‘The dye is extracted from the seeds by soaking and pressing. Dissolve in water the fleshy seed husk containing the dyes. The solution is left to ferment for a week. Separate the dye that has settled to the bottom of the pan, form into scones and dry in the shade. The annatto thus prepared contains 5-12% of the colorant relative to the weight of the seeds.’

The 5-8 kg scones, wrapped in banana and palm leaves, embarked as a sought-after import commodity onto the Portuguese three-masters. Annatto, making its debut in Europe, became within years the most popular primer for fine scarlet as a direct dye requiring no mordanting. By that time, of course, the first shipment of what the Portuguese said ‘terra oriana’ had long since left the port of Lisbon for Luanda. The annatto shrub, which can be propagated by seed or from stem, naturalised almost pantropically, and was the first plant from the New World to be introduced to Africa and Asia.
The secret of annatto’s success, which rivals that of the long-lasting ‘grand teints’, is also in the chemical composition of the dye. The main components are the diapocarotenoids bixin and norbixin in cis form. It contains small amounts of the dicarboxylic acid norbixin ester monomethyl and other degradation products of bixin. Upon annealing, the cis-forms are converted to more stable trans-forms. While the cis forms are redder, the trans forms are already the source of yellow pigments. In this way, annatto; like safflower, has the rare dual colouration capability.
The most committed proponent of molecular research into annatto was Michel-Eugène Chevreul, the influential apostle of dye plants and the natural sciences in general. In 1829, he was the first to isolate the eight different carotenoids present in the pigments of the dye. The world-renowned chemical nutritionist also had to venture beyond the test-tube to understand the coded message of the ‘eternal shrub’ and a disturbed continent. In particular; or rather, incongruously for the time, Chevreul had a revolutionary influence on painting, textiles and the beauty industry, food production and, crucially, healthcare during his long career. His discoveries are the indisputable pillars of modern medicine’s struggle against the problems of dietetics, which are still alive and well today.

Weight 0.02 kg

1 in stock

Description

Description

Sorry, this entry is only available in Hungarian.