 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(May 2022) |
| Indigofera tinctoria | |
|---|---|
 | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Clade: | Tracheophytes |
| Clade: | Angiosperms |
| Clade: | Eudicots |
| Clade: | Rosids |
| Order: | Fabales |
| Family: | Fabaceae |
| Subfamily: | Faboideae |
| Genus: | Indigofera |
| Species: | I. tinctoria |
| Binomial name | |
| Indigofera tinctoria | |
| Synonyms [1] | |
| |
Indigofera tinctoria [2] , also called true indigo, is a species of plant from the bean family that was one of the original sources of indigo dye.
True indigo is a shrub 1–2 metres (3 ft 3 in – 6 ft 7 in) high. It may be an annual, biennial, or perennial, depending on the climate in which it is grown. It has light green pinnate leaves and sheafs of pink or violet flowers.
The rotenoids deguelin, dehydrodeguelin, rotenol, rotenone, tephrosin and sumatrol can be found in I. tinctoria. [3]
It has been naturalized to tropical and temperate Asia, as well as parts of Africa, but its native habitat is unknown since it has been in cultivation worldwide for many centuries.
The plant is a legume, so it is rotated into fields to improve the soil in the same way that other legume crops such as alfalfa and beans are. The plant is also widely grown as a soil-improving groundcover.
Dye is obtained from the processing of the plant's leaves. They are soaked in water and fermented in order to convert the glycoside indican naturally present in the plant to the blue dye indigotin. The precipitate from the fermented leaf solution is mixed with a strong base such as lye.
Today most dye is synthetic, but natural dye from I. tinctoria is still available, marketed as natural colouring where it is known as tarum in Indonesia and nila in Malaysia. In Iran and areas of the former Soviet Union it is known as basma.
Marco Polo (13th century) was the first European to report on the preparation of indigo in India. Indigo was quite often used in European easel painting, beginning in the Middle Ages. [4]
Indigo is a deep color close to the color wheel blue, as well as to some variants of ultramarine, based on the ancient dye of the same name. The word "indigo" comes from the Latin word indicum, meaning "Indian", as the dye was originally exported to Europe from India.
Indigo dye is an organic compound with a distinctive blue color. Historically, indigo was a natural dye extracted from the leaves of some plants of the Indigofera genus, in particular Indigofera tinctoria; dye-bearing Indigofera plants were commonly grown and used throughout the world, in Asia in particular, as an important crop, with the production of indigo dyestuff economically important due to the previous rarity of some blue dyestuffs historically.
The Fabaceae or Leguminosae, commonly known as the legume, pea, or bean family, are a large and agriculturally important family of flowering plants. It includes trees, shrubs, and perennial or annual herbaceous plants, which are easily recognized by their fruit (legume) and their compound, stipulate leaves. The family is widely distributed, and is the third-largest land plant family in number of species, behind only the Orchidaceae and Asteraceae, with about 765 genera and nearly 20,000 known species.
Denim is a sturdy cotton warp-faced textile in which the weft passes under two or more warp threads. This twill weaving produces a diagonal ribbing that distinguishes it from cotton duck. While a denim predecessor known as dungaree has been produced in India for hundreds of years, denim as it is recognized today was first produced in Nîmes, France.
Isatis tinctoria, also called woad, dyer's woad, or glastum, is a flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae with a documented history of use as a blue dye and medicinal plant. Its genus name, Isatis, derives from the ancient Greek word for the plant, ἰσάτις. It is occasionally known as Asp of Jerusalem. Woad is also the name of a blue dye produced from the leaves of the plant. Woad is native to the steppe and desert zones of the Caucasus, Central Asia to Eastern Siberia and Western Asia but is now also found in South-Eastern and Central Europe and western North America.
A legume is a plant in the family Fabaceae, or the fruit or seed of such a plant. When used as a dry grain, the seed is also called a pulse. Legumes are grown agriculturally, primarily for human consumption, for livestock forage and silage, and as soil-enhancing green manure. Well-known legumes include beans, soybeans, chickpeas, peanuts, lentils, lupins, mesquite, carob, tamarind, alfalfa, and clover. Legumes produce a botanically unique type of fruit – a simple dry fruit that develops from a simple carpel and usually dehisces on two sides.
A lake pigment is a pigment made by precipitating a dye with an inert binder, or mordant, usually a metallic salt. Unlike vermilion, ultramarine, and other pigments made from ground minerals, lake pigments are organic. Manufacturers and suppliers to artists and industry frequently omit the lake designation in the name. Many lake pigments are fugitive because the dyes involved are not lightfast. Red lakes were particularly important in Renaissance and Baroque paintings; they were often used as translucent glazes to portray the colors of rich fabrics and draperies.
Indigofera is a large genus of over 750 species of flowering plants belonging to the pea family Fabaceae. They are widely distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the world.
Baptisia australis, commonly known as blue wild indigo or blue false indigo, is a flowering plant in the family Fabaceae (legumes). It is a perennial herb native to much of central and eastern North America and is particularly common in the Midwest, but it has also been introduced well beyond its natural range. Naturally it can be found growing wild at the borders of woods, along streams or in open meadows. It often has difficulty seeding itself in its native areas due to parasitic weevils that enter the seed pods, making the number of viable seeds very low. The plant has low toxicity levels for humans.
Baptisia is a genus in the legume family, Fabaceae. They are flowering herbaceous perennial plants with pea-like flowers, followed by pods, which are sometimes inflated. They are native to woodland and grassland in eastern and southern North America. The species most commonly found in cultivation is B. australis.
Persicaria tinctoria is a species of flowering plant in the buckwheat family. Common names include Chinese indigo and Japanese indigo. It is native to Eastern Europe and Asia.
Amorpha fruticosa is a species of flowering plant in the legume family Fabaceae, known by several common names, including desert false indigo, false indigo-bush, and bastard indigobush. It is native to North America.
Indigofera australis, the Australian indigo or Austral indigo, is an attractive species of leguminous shrub in the genus Indigofera. The genus name Indigofera is Neo-Latin for "bearing Indigo". Australis, from the Latin, means not “Australian” but "southern", referring to the geographical distribution of the species.
Wrightia tinctoria, Pala indigo plant or dyer's oleander, is a flowering plant species in the genus Wrightia found in India, southeast Asia and Australia. It is found in dry and moist regions in its distribution. Various parts of the plant have been used in traditional medicine, but there is no scientific evidence it is effective or safe for treating any disease.
Natural dyes are dyes or colorants derived from plants, invertebrates, or minerals. The majority of natural dyes are vegetable dyes from plant sources—roots, berries, bark, leaves, and wood—and other biological sources such as fungi.
Dyeing is the craft of imparting colors to textiles in loose fiber, yarn, cloth or garment form by treatment with a dye. Archaeologists have found evidence of textile dyeing with natural dyes dating back to the Neolithic period. In China, dyeing with plants, barks and insects has been traced back more than 5,000 years. Natural insect dyes such as Tyrian purple and kermes and plant-based dyes such as woad, indigo and madder were important elements of the economies of Asia and Europe until the discovery of man-made synthetic dyes in the mid-19th century. Synthetic dyes quickly superseded natural dyes for the large-scale commercial textile production enabled by the industrial revolution, but natural dyes remained in use by traditional cultures around the world.
Indigofera heterantha, commonly known as Himalayan indigo, is a species of flowering plant in the legume family Fabaceae. It is native to the northwestern Himalayas of Tibet, in Asia.
Tephrosia apollinea is a legume species, native to southwest Asia and northeast Africa.
Genisteae is a tribe of trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants in the subfamily Faboideae of the family Fabaceae. It includes a number of well-known plants including broom, lupine (lupin), gorse and laburnum.
Indigofera galegoides is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae, native to India, South East Asia, Malesia, and southern China. A shrub usually 2 m (6 ft) high, indigo dye may extracted from it by the same harvesting and processing methods as Indigofera tinctoria.
Media related to Indigofera tinctoria at Wikimedia Commons  | This Faboideae-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |