This is Morinda from Rohrer & Klingner. It’s a very pleasant red with good water resistance. The name Morinda comes from a fruiting tree (also called Noni fruit or Mengkudu), found in Australia, SE Asia, and the Pacific islands. There was a noni tree across the street from my old house in Singapore, and at times it gave off a strong, very strange smell. The translucent, white-grey fruit can be eaten (although rarely is), and along with the leaves, can be used to make a medicinal tea. The bark is used as a popular red or purple dye that matches the ink fairly well.

Like the Morinda dye, this ink is an earthy, powdery scarlet red. I find it much more appealing than the standard mid-red or candy apple red that is so common. It isn’t a strong shading ink, but shading showed on all of the papers that I tried. The tips of the occasional stroke fade to a lighter shade of dark pink red. There is some dark edging in the splatter, but in writing no sheen or halo was found.

As a writing ink, it performed consistently well. Strokes were clean and crisp on premiums, with only a slight feather on office copy. Shading was strongest on Kokuyo, and weakest on office copy, but it was never a strong feature. Drying was fast on all papers, averaging 5-15 seconds on premiums, and under 5 seconds on office copy.

Morinda is a lovely scarlet red. Some might even consider it a perfect red. It’s consistently nice across a wide range of papers, dries fast, and has good water-resistance. For best results, I’d recommend coated papers, but this ink is flexible. I’d love to see a little more shading, and maybe a little halo edging, but as it is, this is a great ink!