BROWN: Brown dyes have been made from walnuts and the bark of the South American brazil tree.
YELLOW: Yellow dyes have been created from saffron, a spice used as a seasoning, medicine and perfume. In ancient Rome, yellow was the most popular wedding color.
ORANGE: Orange cloth was dyed with madder root, a vegetable root grown in Afghanistan and Holland. Madder root was found in the tomb of King Tut and in ancient Pompeii.
RED: Aztecs in Mexico first discovered how to make red dye by crushing cactus-sucking insects called cochineal.
PINK: Pink dye was accidentally discovered by a scientist trying to cure malaria in 1856. The color was originally named "mauve."
PURPLE: Purple, considered the color of royalty, was created by snails. Cleopatra used 20,000 snails soaked for 10 days to obtain one ounce of purple dye for her gowns.
BLUE: Indigo blue, the color of blue jeans, came from a tropical shrub found in India. The shrub leaves were dried, ground and then mixed with water to form a paste.
GREEN: Green was made by a fungus called linchen that grows on rocks. Linchen can live in the most extreme environments on Earth — woodlands, artic tundra, hot deserts, rocky coasts.
BLACK: Black has been created from minerals. In Africa, "mud cloths" are still made by painting areas of cloth in a solution of tannic acid derived from wood and burying the cloth in iron-rich mud.