Safekipedia

Indigo

Adapted from Wikipedia · Explorer experience

A beautiful male Indigo Bunting bird perched in Colonel Samuel Smith Park in Toronto.

Indigo

Indigo is a beautiful blue color that comes from special plants. Long ago, people in India made this blue dye and sent it to Europe. The word "indigo" comes from a Latin word meaning "Indian" because of this.

The famous scientist Sir Isaac Newton thought of indigo as one of the seven colors of the rainbow. He saw it as the color between blue and violet. But scientists today sometimes disagree about exactly where indigo fits in the colors we see.

In the 1980s, computer experts started using the word "indigo" for a dark purple color in their programs. Because of this, today many people think of both blue and purple shades when they hear the word "indigo".

Indigo is also the name of some animals, like the indigobirds and the indigo bunting. These birds have dark, shiny blue feathers. There is even a blue mushroom called Lactarius indigo.

People have used indigo to color clothes for thousands of years. It was used to give blue jeans their blue look. Indigo was very important in places like Guatemala and Mexico.

Images

Handmade indigo-dyed wool, showcasing traditional textile craftsmanship.
Beautiful purple indigo crocuses blooming in a garden.
A plant called Woad (Isatis tinctoria) from the museum in Karlsruhe, Germany.
A diagram showing how a prism splits white light into a rainbow of colors, known as the visible spectrum.
A beautiful Indigo Bunting bird perched in West Tennessee.
A beautiful indigo-colored mushroom (Lactarius indigo) growing in a forest in Ohio.
An Eastern Indigo Snake, a non-venomous species native to the southeastern United States.
A vintage Indian postage stamp from 1923 showcasing the indigo plant.
A sample of Indigo plant extract applied to paper, showing the natural dye process used to create blue color.
A color wheel showing Newton's color spectrum from red to violet, used to study how colors mix together.
A traditional method of making indigo dye using volcanic stone pits, showing a craftswoman preparing natural indigo from plants in Karo lands.

Related articles

Blue
India
Europe
Latin
Guatemala

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on Indigo, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Images from Wikimedia Commons. Tap any image to view credits and license.