The WALA Plant Library
Chicory

Synonyms for Chicory: Barbe de Capucin, Blue Sailors, Coffeeweed, Hendibeh, Succory, Wild Succory
Scientific Name: Cichorium intybus L.
Family: Compositae/Asteraceae (Daisy family)

Description:

If you go looking for chicory when the weather is cloudy or during the afternoon, you may well miss it. Where bright blue flowers line the paths during sunny hours only rough, tough, hollow, hairy stems are to be found on dull days or in the afternoon. These rigid stems may grow to be a metre high, but their leaves are so inconspicuous that the whole plant is nearly invisible to the observer. Only at ground level do the leaves fan out in rosette form and resemble their relatives, the dandelions. So where have all the flowers gone? Chicory opens its bright blue, and occasionally pink or white, flowers from July to September, but only in the morning and only when the sun is shining. The flowers turn their heads to the sun. They blossom for just one day, and then close so tightly that they look like extensions of the tips of their stems. Chicory can be reliably identified by its bitter milky sap, which runs through the whole of the plant.
With its long, spindle-shaped root, which anchors it in the ground, this plant loves heavy clay soils and is commonly found by the wayside and on banks and fallow or waste land.