PLATE 8. Marsdenia tinctoria, OR BROAD-LEAFED INDIGO.
E.W. Marsden delt. Swaine fct.
Published by W. Marsden, 1810.
INDIGO.
Tarum or indigo (Indigofera tinctoria) being the principal dye-stuff they employ, the shrub is always found in their planted spots; but they do not manufacture it into a solid substance, as is the practice elsewhere. The stalks and branches having lain for some days in water to soak and macerate, they then boil it, and work among it with their hands a small quantity of chunam (quick lime, from shells), with leaves of the paku sabba (a species of fern) for fixing the colour. It is afterwards drained off, and made use of in the liquid state.
There is another kind of indigo, called in Sumatra tarum akar, which appears to be peculiar to that country, and was totally unknown to botanists to whom I showed the leaves upon my return to England in the beginning of the year 1780. The common kind is known to have small pinnated leaves growing on stalks imperfectly ligneous. This, on the contrary, is a vine, or climbing plant, with leaves from three to five inches in length, thin, of a dark green, and in the dried state discoloured with blue stains. It yields the same dye as the former sort; they are prepared also in the same manner, and used indiscriminately, no preference being given to the one above the other, as the natives informed me, excepting inasmuch as the tarum akar, by reason of the largeness of the foliage, yields a greater proportion of sediment. Conceiving it might prove a valuable plant in our colonies, and that it was of importance in the first instance that its identity and class should be accurately ascertained, I procured specimens of its fructification, and deposited them in the rich and extensively useful collection of my friend Sir Joseph Banks. In a paper on the Asclepiadeae, highly interesting to botanical science, communicated by Mr. Robert Brown (who has lately explored the vegetable productions of New Holland and other parts of the East) to the Wernerian Society of Edinburgh, and printed in their Transactions, he has done me the honour of naming the genus to which this plant belongs, MARSDENIA, and this particular species Marsdenia tinctoria.*
(*Footnote. 2. M. caule volubili, foliis cordatis ovato-oblongis acuminatis glabriusculis basi antice glandulosis, thyrsis lateralibus, fauce barbata. Tarram akkar Marsd. Sumat. page 78 edition 2 Hab. In insula Sumatra. (v.s. in Herb. Banks.)
KASUMBA.
Under the name of kasumba are included two plants yielding materials for dyeing, but very different from each other. The kasumba (simply) or kasumba jawa, as it is sometimes called, is the Carthamus tinctorius, of which the flowers are used to produce a saffron colour, as the name imports. The kasumba kling or galuga is the Bixa orellana, or arnotto of the West Indies. Of this the capsule, about an inch in length, is covered with soft prickles or hair, opens like a bivalve shell, and contains in its cavities a dozen or more seeds, the size of grape-stones, thickly covered with a reddish farina, which is the part that constitutes the dye.
Sapang, the Brazil-wood, (Caesalpinia sappan), whether indigenous or not, is common in the Malayan countries. The heart of this being cut into chips, steeped for a considerable time in water, and then boiled, is used for dying here, as in other countries. The cloth or thread is repeatedly dipped in this liquid, and hung to dry between each wetting till it is brought to the shade required. To fix the colour alum is added in the boiling.