Which moth's larvae produce wild 'tussah' silk?

The tussar or tussah silkmoth, several species of the genus Antheraea, which feed on oak and other forest trees rather than on mulberry. The thread is coarser, stronger, naturally golden-brown, and impossible to make white, which is why tussah cloth has the texture and colour it does.

The processing differs in a way that matters. Ordinary mulberry silk is reeled from cocoons boiled with the pupa still inside, killing it to keep the single filament unbroken; tussah is often gathered from the forest after the moth has already emerged, leaving a cut thread that has to be spun rather than reeled. That is the basis of the ahimsa or peace silk sold on ethical grounds - shorter fibres, duller lustre, a living moth.

Mulberry silk itself comes from an animal that no longer exists in the wild. Bombyx mori has been domesticated for perhaps five thousand years into something that cannot fly, cannot feed itself as an adult, and has no defence against anything - a moth that exists only in human care. The technique was a Chinese state secret whose export carried a death sentence, and it reportedly reached Byzantium in the sixth century inside the hollow canes of two monks.