30°W
60°N
30°E
0°
60°E
90°E
120°E
Polish cochineal Porphyrophora polonica
Armenian cochineal Porphyrophora hamelii Kermes Kermes vermilio
various red-dye scale insects genus Porphyrophora
30°N American cochineal Dactylopius coccus (introduced 19th century)
various red-dye scale insects genus Porphyrophora
Lac Kerria lacca
0°
0 0
1000 mi American cochineal Dactylopius coccus (introduced 19th century)
1000 km
9. Habitats and later areas of cultivation of red-dye insects in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia
deep crimson color, ease of use, and abundant supply of the dye extracted from Dactylopius coccus, an American species of the same superfamily, Coccoidea, that yields more red colorant than any of them (see figs. 16, 17).6 Both cultivated and wild forms of the tiny American parasite, called cochineal, feed on moisture and nutrients from the fruit-bearing prickly pear cactus (genus Opuntia) native to tropical and subtropical Mexico and South America (fig. 18). Biologists to this day have not agreed on where the insect originated, though recent studies of the genetics of 10. Female kermes insects on an oak leaf, southern France, 2008
11 (far right). A cochineal insect as seen under a microscope. Nicolaas Hartsoeker, Essay de Dioptrique (Paris, 1694), sect. 1, p. 52. New York Public Library, Science, Industry and Business Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
10
the insect point to South America. Domestication resulted in larger insects that produced more colorant. To make cochineal red, the colorant (mainly carminic acid) is extracted from the dried bodies of the female insects (fig. 19) in water. A mordant, or mineral salt, often alum (aluminum sulfate), is required to help bond the dye to the fibers. Other additives such as acids and alkali have traditionally been used to shift the naturally bright pink hue of cochineal to deep crimson, purple, or black (see fig. 20). This practice, artfully executed by Andean dyers in the highlands of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador in the centuries before the Spanish conquest, was described in 1653 by Bernabé Cobo, a Spanish Jesuit missionary who lived in