Bodo Jacksteit, age 13, of Victoria, British Columbia, for her question:

What are vegetable dyes?

In the past, dyes for coloring fabrics were squeezed from various plants. Leather was tanned brown with the tannic acid from various tree barks. Ink was made from dark juices of certain galls. Veavers used the juice of the madder weed to dye their tweedy textiles almost any shade of brown from dusty pink to rich chocolate. Hundreds of these dyes were found in the vegetable kingdom and expert cloth makers knew thousands of recipes for using them.

Every plant species manufactures certain unique chemicals of its own. The vegetable dyes used in the past were plant chemicals and modern chemists can copy many of nature's chemicals. They have copied most of the old plant dyes and even improved some of nature's recipes. Vegetable dyes are hard to come by, costly and they tend to vary. Modern textile mills use synthetic dye chemicals    which are cheaper and more dependable.