Indigofera tinctoria bears the common name true indigo. The plant was one of the original sources of indigo dye. Originally from Pakistan, it has now 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. Today most dye is synthetic, but dye from I. tinctoria is still available, marketed as natural coloring. The plant is also widely grown as a soil-improving groundcover.

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 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.

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, pressed into cakes, dried, and powdered. The powder is then mixed with various other substances to produce different shades of blue and purple.

NOTICE: For Hair Conditioning & Coloring Use Only. This product is not for internal use, or for use on skin, eye area or on scalp w/ open wounds. Test color on strand of hair as results may vary and to alert you to possible allergies and to assure satisfactory results and fine-tune timing for color.

Our black henna powder is all-natural indigofera tinctoria and does not contain PPD (p-Phenylenediamine - a chemical typically found in "black henna" sold in the tattoo industry).

Non-irradiated. Indigofera tinctorial aka Indigo, Pigmentum Indicum. Conventional from Pakistan. Organic from India. PPD (paraphenylenediamine) Free

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