As a dicotyledonous plant as spicy as chili peppers, it has more than 800 relatives of forty genera and more than 800 species. They can grow from a height of 10 cm to more than 160 cm.
The long needle-like leaves of Tateshina are usually stalked and alternate in pairs. As for the flowers, they usually grow into densely packed spikes.
Most of this family of Tateshina grows mainly in the northern temperate zone, with a few also growing in the tropics.
At present, we have about 200 kinds of Tateshina in China, covering about 14 genera, all distributed throughout the country.
Among them, the buckwheat we eat is one of the plants of the Tateshina family.
In these indigo plants in China, although the indigo grass is not planted as an ornamental plant, it has rare beauty compared to other non-professional ornamental tateshina plants.
Both in terms of its five-petaled pink flowers and in terms of the scale of its spike-like clusters, there is a thrilling beauty.
The petal texture of the lotus grass is spotlessly clean like a lotus flower, and when it blooms, it looks like miniature versions of the lotus flowers are tightly one after another, you lean on me, I embrace you, and converge into a head-shaped inflorescence.
It has the common alias of half-year grain, pig indigo grass, and fine-leaved one-branch indigo.
It is an annual or perennial herb that lies flat, clumps, is rooted at the nodes, and branches from the base part. Most of the grasses are about 10–15 cm tall, with narrow lanceolate or lanceolate leaves with extremely short or nearly sessile petioles.
The top of the indigo grass is a head-like inflorescence with dense glandular hairs on the stem, the calyx and corolla, and the petals composed of flattened petals are lilac-red.
The flowering and fruiting period of indigo grass begins in July and can be used until December. Its oval seeds are about 2 to 3 mm long and take the shape of a biconvex mirror.
Indigo grass is not only a beauty in the family Tateshina, but also a herb according to the "Sichuan Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine".
Indigo grass is warm, mild and spicy, they are non-toxic, and have the effect of dispersing cold and invigorating blood.