Our 2025 EFN seed catalogue is now live! Featuring over 130 new varieties and over 640 total varieties, sourced from over 50 different growers from across the country. Huge thanks to all of our growers, volunteers, and to our stellar seed-house team in Minnesota! Each of you make this work possible.

Dyer's Chamomile

Dyer's Chamomile

Regular price $3.75 Sale

Cota tinctoria

Origin: Mediterranean

Improvement status: Cultivated wild material

Seeds per packet: ~150

Germination tested 11/2023: 25% (Below standard)

Life cycle: Perennial

This is a low-maintenance perennial dye plant from the Mediterranean. The fragrant leaves are lacy with a bluish-green hue, and the bright yellow daisy-like flowers offer a burst of golden sunshine throughout the growing season. Plants spread readily, creating a mat of beautiful foliage and blooms. Dried flowers create a crisp yellow dye that can be over-dyed with indigo or woad for brilliant greens. Can also produce a buff or golden-orange dye.

This is not a chamomile used for culinary purposes, but according to Plants for a Future, it has myriad potential medicinal uses: "The whole plant is antispasmodic, diaphoretic, emetic, emmenagogue and vesicant. It is used internally as a tea, which can be made either from the flowers or the whole plant. Applied externally, it is used as a poultice on piles [hemorrhoids] and can also be applied to the bath water. The leaves are rubbed onto insect stings."

Beautiful — and useful too!

Our seed comes from our friend, the great Frank Morton of
 Wild Garden Seeds in Philomath, Oregon.