Family Compositae or Asteraceae (Composite Family).
The distinctive sky-blue flowers make Chicory unmistakable. Varieties of Chicory are used as salad greens and the roots as a coffee substitute or additive. It grows along roadsides, often in the company of Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota) and seems especially happy in a crack in the asphalt at the edge of a parking lot.
Gray describes the genus and the single species in
our area:
CICHÓRIUM [Tourn.] L. SUCCORY or CHICORY
Heads several-flowered. Involucre double, herbaceous,
the inner of 8-10, the outer of 5 short and spreading
bracts. Achenes striate; pappus of numerous small
chaffy scales, forming a short crown. Branching
perennials, with deep roots; the sessile heads 2 or 3
together, axillary and terminal, or solitary on short
thickened branches. Flowers bright blue, varying to
purple or pink (rarely white), showy. (Altered from
the Arabian name of the plant.)
1. C. INTYBUS L. (COMMON C., BLUE SAILORS.)
Stem-leaves oblong or lanceolate, partly clasping, the
lowest runicate, those of the rigid flowering branches
minute. (Including var. divaricatum of Am. auth.,
probably not of DC.) Roadsides and fields, Nfd. to
Minn., and southw. July-Oct. (Nat. from Eu.)