orcein

thumb|White wool yarn dyed with "orchella weeds", using traditional Natural dye|plant dye methods. Orcein, also called archil, orchil, lacmus and C.I. Natural Red 28 - CICN 758600, is any dye extracted from several species of lichen, commonly known as "orchella weeds", found in various parts of the world. A major source is the archil lichen, Roccella tinctoria. Orcinol is extracted from such lichens. It is then converted to orcein by ammonia and air. In traditional dye-making methods, urine was used as the ammonia source. If the conversion is carried out in the presence of potassium carbonate, calcium hydroxide, and calcium sulfate (in the form of potash, lime, and gypsum in traditional dye-making methods), the result is litmus, a more complex molecule. The manufacture was described by Cocq in 1812 and in the UK in 1874. Edmund Roberts noted orchilla as a principal export of the Cape Verde islands, superior to the same kind of "moss" found in Italy or the Canary Islands, that in 1832 was yielding an annual revenue of $200,000. Commercial archil is either a powder (called cudbear) or a paste. It is red in acidic pH and blue in alkaline pH.

== History and uses == thumb|Chromosomes of Allium ascalonicum stained with orcein The chemical components of orcein were elucidated only in the 1950s by Hans Musso. The structures are shown below. A paper originally published in 1961, embodying most of Musso's work on components of orcein and litmus, was translated into English and published in 2003 in a special issue of the journal Biotechnic & Histochemistry (Vol 78, No. 6) devoted to the dye.