Chicory

Common chicory (Cichorium intybus) is a bushy perennial herb with blue, lavender, or occasionally white flowers. It grows as a wild plant on roadsides in its native Europe, and in North America and Australia, where it has become naturalized. Common chicory is also known as blue sailors, succory, and coffeeweed.

It is also called cornflower, although that name is more properly applied to Centaurea cyanus. The cultivated forms are grown for their leaves (var. foliosum), or for the roots (var. sativum), which are baked, ground, and used as a coffee substitute and additive. Common names for varieties of var. foliosum include endive, radicchio, Belgian endive, French endive, red endive, sugarloaf or witloof.

Chicory is also the common name in the US (and in France) for curly endive (Cichorium endivia). There is considerable confusion between Cichorium endivia and Cichorium intybus.

When flowering, chicory has a tough, grooved, and more or less hairy stem, from 30 to 100 centimetres (10 to 40 in) tall. The leaves are stalked, lanceolate and unlobed.

The flower heads are 2 to 4 centimetres (0.79 to 1.6 in) wide, and bright blue. There are two rows of involucral bracts - the inner are longer and erect, the outer are shorter and spreading. It flowers from July until October. The achenes have no pappus (feathery hairs), but do have toothed scales on top.



Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicory


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