The genus name is literal: Indigofera, the indigo bearer. The dye came from Indigofera tinctoria and a few relatives, and from the late 1740s until the end of the century indigo stood second only to rice among the exports of colonial South Carolina. Eliza Lucas Pinckney is the name attached to that story and earned a real part of it, though the experiments ran through a dozen Lowcountry planters, and the working knowledge of the dye came largely from enslaved Africans who had made indigo long before they ever saw Carolina. The history sits close to home for a nursery in Aiken, though the plants grown here are ornamental rather than commercial.

What the garden species offer is a long, quiet season of pea flowers on airy compound foliage. Indigofera incarnata, sometimes still sold as Indigofera decora, carries pink-and-white racemes low and spreading; the white form is cleaner still. Indigofera heterantha and Indigofera amblyantha are taller Himalayan and Chinese shrubs that flower rose-purple from early summer until frost, and both bloom on new wood, so a hard cut in late winter costs nothing. As legumes they fix their own nitrogen and want sun, drainage, and very little else.