Chinese Indigo

Did you know

• Indigo dye extracted from this plant was once worth more than gold by weight in medieval Europe.
• The blue dye is not present in the living plant but is produced through fermentation of the leaves.
• Indigo was the original dye used to color blue jeans when Levi Strauss created them in the 1850s.
• The dye process involves over a dozen steps and can take weeks to produce a single batch of pigment.
• Ancient Egyptian mummies have been found wrapped in indigo-dyed cloth dating back over 4,000 years.

Color meanings

Uses

• natural dye production
• traditional medicine
• soil improvement