Indigo is a term used for a number of hues in the region of blue. The word comes from the ancient dye of the same name. The term "indigo" can refer to the color of the dye, various colors of fabric dyed with indigo dye, a spectral color, one of the seven colors of the rainbow as described by Newton, or a region on the color wheel, and can include various shades of blue, ultramarine, and green-blue. Since the web era, the term has also been used for various purple and violet hues identified as "indigo", based on use of the term "indigo" in HTML web page specifications.
Indigo dye is an organic compound with a distinctive blue color. Indigo is 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, particularly in Asia, with the production of indigo dyestuff economically important due to the historical rarity of other blue dyestuffs.
Denim is a sturdy cotton warp-faced textile in which the weft passes under two or more warp threads. This twill weave produces a diagonal ribbing that distinguishes it from cotton duck. Denim, as it is recognized today, was first produced in Nîmes, France.
Acanthaceae is a family of dicotyledonous flowering plants containing almost 250 genera and about 2500 species. Most are tropical herbs, shrubs, or twining vines; some are epiphytes. Only a few species are distributed in temperate regions. The four main centres of distribution are Indonesia and Malaysia, Africa, Brazil, and Central America. Representatives of the family can be found in nearly every habitat, including dense or open forests, scrublands, wet fields and valleys, sea coast and marine areas, swamps, and mangrove forests.
Iron(II) sulfate (British English: iron(II) sulphate) or ferrous sulfate denotes a range of salts with the formula FeSO4·xH2O. These compounds exist most commonly as the heptahydrate (x = 7) but several values for x are known. The hydrated form is used medically to treat or prevent iron deficiency, and also for industrial applications. Known since ancient times as copperas and as green vitriol (vitriol is an archaic name for sulfate), the blue-green heptahydrate (hydrate with 7 molecules of water) is the most common form of this material. All the iron(II) sulfates dissolve in water to give the same aquo complex [Fe(H2O)6]2+, which has octahedral molecular geometry and is paramagnetic. The name copperas dates from times when the copper(II) sulfate was known as blue copperas, and perhaps in analogy, iron(II) and zinc sulfate were known respectively as green and white copperas.
Isatis tinctoria, also called woad, dyer's woad, dyer's-weed, 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.
Camellia sinensis is a species of evergreen shrub or small tree in the flowering plant family Theaceae. Its leaves, leaf buds, and stems can be used to produce tea. Common names include tea plant, tea shrub, and tea tree.
Indigofera tinctoria, also called true indigo, is a species of plant from the bean family that was one of the original sources of indigo dye.
Monocarpic plants are those that flower and set seeds only once, and then die.
Ficus tinctoria, also known as dye fig, or humped fig is a hemiepiphytic tree of genus Ficus. It is also one of the species known as strangler fig.
Indigofera suffruticosa, commonly known as Guatemalan indigo, small-leaved indigo, West Indian indigo, wild indigo, and anil, is a flowering plant in the pea family, Fabaceae.
Strobilanthes kunthiana, known as Kurinji or Neelakurinji in Tamil language and Malayalam and Gurige in Kannada, is a shrub of the bear's breeches family (Acanthaceae) that is found in the shola forests of the Western Ghats in Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The purplish blue flower blossoms only once in 12 years, and gave the Nilgiri Mountains range its name as nil (blue) + giri (mountains). The name Neelakurinji originates from the Malayalam language neela (blue) + kurinji (flower). Of all long interval bloomers Strobilanthes kunthiana is the most rigorously demonstrated, with documented bloomings in 1838, 1850, 1862, 1874, 1886, 1898, 1910, 1922, 1934, 1946, 1958, 1970, 1982, 1994, 2006 and 2018, these have no match to Solar cycles.
Persicaria tinctoria is a species of flowering plant in the buckwheat family. Common names include Chinese indigo, Japanese indigo and dyer's knotweed. It is native to Eastern Europe and Asia.
Garcinia dulcis is a tropical fruit tree native to the Philippines, Java, Lesser Sunda Islands, eastern Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. It was domesticated early and spread inland into mainland Asia. It is commonly known as mundu or munu in Indonesia and Malaysia, baniti or taklang-anak in the Philippines, and maphuut or ma phut in Thailand. In English, it is sometimes known as yellow mangosteen, although that name is used for several other species as well.
Strobilanthes callosa(Synonym: Carvia callosa Bremek) is a shrub found mainly in the low lying hills of the Western Ghats, all along the west coast of India. Its standardized Hindi name is maruadona (मरुआदोना) which it is called in the state of Madhya Pradesh where it is also found. In the state of Maharashtra, in the Marathi language, and other local dialects and in the neighboring state of Karnataka, the shrub is locally known as karvi (कारवी), sometimes spelled in English as karvy.
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.
Strobilanthes dyeriana, the Persian shield or royal purple plant, is a species of flowering plant in the acanthus family Acanthaceae, native to Myanmar.
Strobilanthes alternata, may be known as red ivy, red-flame ivy, or waffle plant, is a member of the family Acanthaceae native to Java. It is a prostrate plant with purple colored leaves.
Strobilanthes tonkinensis is a species of herbaceous plant native to Southeast Asia. It is used as a flavoring for tea and other food.
