The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Philenoptera cyanescens
Also called West African Indigo
African Indigo is a scrambling shrub from West and Central Africa, grown for its indigo-yielding leaves and as a traditional dye source. It does best in warm, seasonally dry conditions with full sun.
Philenoptera cyanescens is a species of shrub from family Fabaceae. It is commonly known as elu in Yoruba, anunu by Igbo people as talaki in Hausa, sauru in Tiv and as ebelu by the Edo people
It is a traditional source of indigo in West Africa to dye fabric.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Philenoptera cyanescens by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
