Alizarin, or 1,2-dihydroxyanthraquinone, is a once-important orange-red dye, originally extracted from the root of the madder (Rubia tinctorum) but after 1871 made synthetically from anthraquinone (see quinone) by a process developed by William Perkin (1869). An earlier German synthesis (1868) was the first laboratory preparation of a natural dyestuff. Alizarin is now little used.