Sunken forest sassafras

Over Labor Day weekend, my family and I decided to celebrate my 45th birthday with a trip to Fire Island. We are currently living in Sayville, which is where the ferry departs from Long Island to Sailor’s Haven, so it’s an easy day trip for us that we hadn’t yet taken. Unlike most of the typical Fire Island tourists, we weren’t headed to lounge on the beach - I was much more interested in walking through Sunken Forest, which did not disappoint!

According to the National Park Service website, Fire Island’s Sunken Forest is considered to be a “globally rare” ecological community, making it quite a unique place to visit. Sunken Forest has a unique assemblage of plants found in just a few locations throughout the world. While American holly (Ilex opaca) dominate the forest, sassafras (Sassafras albidum), juneberry (Amerlanchier canadensis), oaks and black cherry trees also comprise the Sunken Forest canopy.

This unique ecological community got its name because it appears to be “sunken” behind well-established sand dunes which run along the Atlantic coast. Through a natural phenomenon known as “salt spray pruning,” the sand dunes restrict, and therefore protect, the forest’s ability to grow beyond the height of the sand dunes themselves. The resulting forest canopy is a stunning and stark contrast to the beach.

While American holly trees dominate the forest, I was mostly interested in the sassafras trees because the root bark can be used to create beautiful natural orange  dyes. As the trees mature, “the trunk often becomes very twisty and turns reddish brown.” The sassafras tree is very easy to identify because of its leaves, some of which are shaped like mittens (which the knitter in me finds adorable.) Other leaves have three prongs and some just look like plain old normal leaves. Historically, sassafras roots have been used to make tea and root beer. In fact, if you scrunch up a leaf and rub it together you can smell that distinctive and familiar root beer scent! 

The use of sassafras bark as a dye dates back to the Native American tribes, who used multiple parts of the plant for medicinal purposes. Sassafras leaves could be rubbed directly into wounds and were used to treat various illnesses, including fever, urinary disorders and acne. 

I was happy to be able to ethically collect some sassafras bark during my visit to Sunken Forest. Along the boardwalk were many downed trees where pieces of the bark lay readily available and within easy reach - I never had to step off the designated boardwalk to collect the bark.

We even met Ranger Dave, who confirmed our identification of the sassafras trees. 

When processing the bark for dyeing, it’s the inner bark that gives the color - you can see how much of an orange-ish color the bark contains. To extract the most color, it’s advisable to break the bark down into many small chips. This took a few hours and I got a few blisters, but I just knew the orange dye would be worth the effort!

For each dye bath, I used approximately 250 grams of sassafras bark chips, which I soaked for a full day prior to simmering. I used alum sulfate to pre-mordant my yarn because, although many tree barks contain natural tannins, which act as a natural mordant, sassafras does not. The mordant is an important part of the natural dyeing process because it helps the color attach to the yarn. 

I prefer to use my dye baths through exhaustion. While the initial dye baths result in the most deeply saturated colors, successive dye baths still contain color that I do not like to waste. Successive dye baths will result in a paler shade each time, and these saturated and paler shaded often pair beautifully together. For the sassafras bark, my initial dye baths of 250 grams dried wood chips produced gorgeous rusty orange-brown shades on 500 grams of wool. Successive dye baths produced beautiful peach shades. You can continue to use the wood chips multiple times to extract more color - I was able to dye twenty 100g skeins of wool with just 250 grams of chips by simmering the bark chips several times before they lost viable color. 

This natural orange shade is not commonly found in natural dyes, so I was thrilled to be able to experiment with the Sassafras bark this month. The orange color gives off pumpkin spice vibes, which is appropriate for this time of the year when pumpkin spice everything is dominating retail. On my next visit to Fire Island, or somewhere where sassafras are prominent, I look forward to collecting sassafras leaves for another natural dye project. Leaves will also produce different shades of dye depending on whether you collect them fresh or fallen, so it will be exciting to see what further colors are possible to obtain from the sassafras tree.

Protected from development since the 1950s, the Sunken Forest Preserve, Inc. donated the property in 1964 to the Fire Island National Seashore, “under the condition that the property shall always be maintained in its natural state and operated as a sanctuary, and that no public road or highway shall be built through it.” This unique forest is truly a treasure and worth the cost of the ferry ticket for a few hours of tranquility. 

 I’ve now got several kits that include yarn I’ve dyed with the Sassafras bark from this visit to Sunken Forest. I’m looking forward to dyeing with leaves from the Sassafras tree in the future - it will be interesting to see the difference in color between the bark and the leaves!