International Space Science Institute (ISSI), Hallerstrasse 6, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland

Heavy elements with A>4 are minor constituents in the solar wind plasma that is largely made up of H and He. Nevertheless, these elements are markers (or dyes) in the bulk flow that carry information about the conditions in the source regions of the flow as well as about the processes prevailing there: The ratios between charge states of a specific element serve as a proxy for the electron temperature in the corona, and the ratios between element abundances serve as probes into the chromosphere where they get fractionated depending on their first ionisation potential. We will concentrate on results from the SWICS instrument on Ulysses obtained on its first complete orbit through the high latitude heliosphere during solar minimum. The heliosphere was dominated by two high-speed streams from the polar coronal holes, separated by a sharp boundary from the slow solar wind at low latitudes. Composition data indicate that this boundary extends from down in the chromosphere out to 5 AU and beyond. We will use these data to infer what can be said about the source regions of the two fundamentally different solar wind types.