INDIGO & INDIGOFERA
INDIGO is a well known and exceedingly valuable blue dyeing material. The substance has been known among Western communities from an early period, being mentioned by Pliny as Indicum; when it made its appearance in England it was called Indigo. The names show that the material in its origin and production is closely related to India, among the commercial products of which it has always occupied a distinctive and important place.
INDIGOFERA, the plant from which the above substance is extracted, and the plant which brought untold miseries to India in general and Bengal in particular, is "a genus of LEGUMINOSAE which comprises some 300 species distributed throughout the tropical and warm temperate regions of the globe—India having 40. Western India may be described as the headquarters of the species, so far as India is concerned, 25 (thus fully half) being peculiar to that Presidency. On the other hand, on the eastern side of India (the provinces of Bengal, Assam and Burma) there is a marked decrease in the number of species but a visible increase in the prevalence of those that are met with".
But as has already been said "species of Indigofera are distributed throughout the tropical regions of the globe (both in the Old and New Worlds) with Africa as their headquarters. And in addition to the Indigoferas several widely different plants yield the self-same substance chemically. Hence, for many ages, the dye prepared from these has borne a synonymous name in most tongues, and to such an extent has this been the
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