Chicory Root is Best Known For Coffee Flavoring

But did you know that chicory leaves are common salad fare? A wildflower used from tip to tip.

You can find these beautiful blue flowers growing in many fields across the US. North, South, East and as far West as Nebraska.

And as wildflower gardens become ever more popular you might even find them growing in your neighbor's back yard. A wild flower starter pack would seem to be missing a star if it does not include chicory seeds.

They Have Been Called Chicory; Succory; Blue Sailors; Bunk

Cichorium Intybus

• Flower-head: Bright, deep azure to gray blue, rarely pinkish or white, 1 to 1-1/2 inches broad, set close to stem, often in small clusters for nearly the entire length; each head is a composite of ray flowers only, 5-toothed at upper edge, and set in a flat green receptacle.


• Stem: Rigid, branching, 1 to 3 feet high.


• Leaves: Lower ones spreading on ground, 3 to 6 inches long, spatulate, with deeply cut or irregular edges, narrowed into petioles (stalk that joins the leaf to the stem), from a deep tap-root; upper leaves of stem and branches minute, bract-like.


• Preferred Habitat: Roadsides, waste places, fields.


• Flowering Season: June-October.


• Distribution: Common in eastern United States and Canada, south to the Carolinas; also sparingly westward to Nebraska.

Chicory Root Flavors Coffee or May Even Act as a Substitute

At least the dried and ground root of this European invader is known to hosts of people who buy it undisguised or not, according as they count it an improvement to their coffee or a disagreeable adulterant. In other words some people enjoy the taste of chicory in their coffee. While others find it not so pleasant.

So great is the demand for chicory that, notwithstanding its cheapness, it is often in its turn adulterated with roasted wheat, rye, acorns, and carrots.

It sounds like producers of chicory will add ingredients to expand the amount. And though this may be acceptable by some, others would prefer pure chicory and are willing to pay the price.

Chicory Leaves to Enhance Your Salad

Forced and blanched in a warm, dark place, the bitter leaves find a ready market as a salad known as "barbe de Capucin" by the fanciful French. You may know these leaves as endive. Dandelion leaves, also chicory's relatives, appear on the table, too in spring, where people have learned the possibilities of salads, as they certainly have in Europe.

Chicory Roots Run Deep

From the depth to which the tap-root penetrates, it is not unlikely the succory derived its name from the Latin _succurrere_ meaning - to run under. The Arabic name _chicourey_ testifies to the almost universal influence of Arabian physicians and writers in Europe after the Conquest.

Can You Recognize Chicory in These Other Languages?

• French - chicoree
• Spanish - achicoria
• Portuguese - chicoria
• Italian - cicorea
• German - chicorie
• Dutch - cichorei
• Swedish - cikorie
• Russian - tsikorei
• Danes - cicorie

Honoring Chicory's Beautiful Blue Wildflowers

Here are a couple of quotes from authors who's very words portray the beautiful blue wildflowers of the Chicory. Notice how in the first quote there is reference to cloudy days and morning flowers? Well that refers to the fact that Chicory flowers love cloudy days. And rain or shine they are all closed up by noon each day. They really are morning lovers.

"On cloudy days or in the morning only throughout midsummer the "peasant posy" opens its "dear blue eyes"
"Where tired feet
Toil to and fro;
Where flaunting Sun
May see thy heavenly hue,
Or weary Sorrow look from thee
Toward a tenderer blue!""
--Margaret Deland.

In his "Humble Bee" Emerson, too, sees only beauty in the "Succory to match the sky;"

And some writers see them as only pesky weeds. Virgil paints a picture of fields choked by them. For sure, if a farmer were growing something other than chicory and this flower took hold it would be nothing short of a disaster!

Vergil, rarely caught in a prosaic, practical mood, wrote, "And spreading succ'ry chokes the rising field."