Mesmara Indigo Powder 500G

Baptisia australis, commonly known as blue wild indigo or blue false indigo, is a flowering plant in the family Fabaceae (legumes). It is toxic.it is native to much of central and eastern North America and is particularly common in the Midwest, but it has also been introduced well beyond one its natural range. Naturally it can be found growing wild at the borders of woods, along streams or in open meadows. It often has difficulty seeding itself in its native areas due to parasitic weevils that enter the seed pods, making the number of viable seeds very low. Indigo is a plant that has a blue dye in it.  You probably have indigo dyed cloth in your closet, in a pair of blue jeans.  Jeans are dyed with indigo.  People have used indigo alone or in combination with henna to dye their hair black for at least 4000 years. During the 19th and 20th century indigo was such a common hair dye in Europe and the US, that it was marketed as “black henna”.  Henna is never black, henna never dyes hair black, but powdered indigo resembles powdered henna and it DOES dye hair black.  So, when indigo was sold as hair dye, it was called “black henna”.  When it was sold to dye cloth, it was called indigo. There are still many boxes of indigo in stores marked “black henna” as a legacy of this old misnomer. 

Some boxes of “black henna” are real indigo. Some boxes are cellulostic material and PPD, para-phenylenediamine, a hazardous aniline (coal tar) dye.   If you open a box of “black henna” that is indigo, you’ll see green powder that smells like frozen peas.  If you mix that with water, you’ll see a blue glaze form on the surface after a while.  If you plop some wet indigo powder on paper or cotton, blue dye will leak out.  Indigo hair dye looks like what you see above.  This indigo is from mehandi.

Indigo is a bit of a chore to use as a hair dye, but the results are gorgeous!