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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.

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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 L.
Synonyms[1]
Anila tinctoria var. normalis Kuntze Indigofera anil var. orthocarpa DC. Indigofera bergii Vatke Indigofera cinerascens DC. Indigofera houer Forssk. Indigofera indica Lam. Indigofera oligophylla Baker Indigofera orthocarpa (DC.) O.Berg & C.F.Schmidt Indigofera sumatrana Gaertn. Indigofera tinctoria Blanco Indigofera tulearensis Drake

Description

True indigo is a shrub one to two meters 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]

Distribution and habitat

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.

Agricultural use

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

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 coloring 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.

History

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]

See also

• Persicaria tinctoria

References

Further reading

• Feeser, Andrea. Red, White, and Black Make Blue: Indigo in the Fabric of Colonial South Carolina Life (University of Georgia Press; 2013) 140 pages; scholarly study explains how the plant's popularity as a dye bound together local and transatlantic communities, slave and free, in the 18th century.
• Grohmann, Adolf. Färberei and Indigofabrikation in Grohmann, A. 1933. Südarabien als Wirtschaftsgebiet, Schriften der Philosophischen Fakultät der Deutschen Universität in Prag 13th vol. (Rohrer; Leipzig) 45-8.

External links

• Media related to Indigofera tinctoria at Wikimedia Commons

На других языках

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- [en] Indigofera tinctoria

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[es] Indigofera tinctoria

Indigofera tinctoria es una planta perteneciente a la familia de las leguminosas y es la fuente original de tinte índigo. Está naturalizada en Asia tropical y templada, y partes de África, su hábitat primigenio no se conoce.

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[fr] Indigotier

Indigofera tinctoria

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[ru] Индигофера красильная

Индигофера красильная (лат. Indigofera tinctoria) — растение семейства Бобовые, вид рода Индигофера, происходящее из Индии и культивируемое во многих тропических странах ради получения синей краски.

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