re: #443 Decatur Deb

Main source of blue in medieval France. Strongly linked to Our Lady (Notre Dame).

From your link:

The dye chemical extracted from woad is indigo, the same dye extracted from “true indigo”, Indigofera tinctoria, but in a lower concentration. Following the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India by the navigator Vasco da Gama in 1498, great amounts of indigo were imported from Asia. Laws were passed in some parts of Europe to protect the woad industry from the competition of the indigo trade. It was proclaimed that indigo caused yarns to rot: “In 1577 the German government officially prohibited the use of indigo, denouncing it as that pernicious, deceitful and corrosive substance, the Devil’s dye.”[23] “… a recess of the Diet held in 1577 prohibited the use of ‘the newly-invented, deceitful, eating and corrosive dye called the devil’s dye.’” This prohibition was repeated in 1594 and again in 1603.[24] In France, Henry IV, in an edict of 1609, forbade under pain of death the use of “the false and pernicious Indian drug”.[25]

Now it’s merely an invasive species (on this continent).