Backyard Gardener: Chicory, the roadside wildflower
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Hello Mid-Ohio Valley farmers and gardeners! We are slowly drying out from the weeks of wet weather. Fall will soon be here, and this year may be a great time to plant trees and shrubs. We should have plenty of moisture and give plants some time to establish roots before the first frost.
This week I want to talk about a plant in bloom this time of year, chicory (Cichorium intybus). In the late summer months of July and August, you may notice a sky-blue flowered plant along county roadsides or in pasture fields in the valley. Chicory has also been called blue sailors, coffee weed, cornflower, Italian dandelion or succory.
Chicory belongs to the aster family (Asteraceae) and has been cultivated for centuries for its edible leaves, buds and roots, in addition to being used medicinally. Young leaves can be eaten raw as a salad green, with a very bitter taste. Older leaves can be cooked to reduce the bitterness. It was also grown as a hay crop for livestock in Europe.
Chicory originated in the Mediterranean and became distributed throughout much of the world, where it was grown for centuries as a salad green. Its cultivation in North America began in the 1700s and ended in about 1950 when it became more economical to import chicory.
Chicory escaped cultivation and has spread throughout southern Canada and the United States (zones 3-9), proliferating along roads and highways. It can also be found in lawns, pastures, hayfields, along railroads and in waste places.
The plant favors lime-rich soils but can tolerate a variety of soil types. Chicory flowers open each morning and close as sunlight increases in intensity around noon. Only a few flower heads open at a time, and each head opens for a single day.
Chicory (especially the roots) have a unique history connected with the Civil War. Starting in 1861, Union forces enacted a naval blockade on the port of New Orleans, which halted all shipments of foreign goods. The major hub to import coffee into the South was now closed.
The Confederate Army was forced to ration coffee and find a substitute. Descendants of French colonists in Louisiana revived the practice of chicory coffee. Chicory was relatively affordable and could be grown locally. Ground chicory roots were mixed in with coffee beans to extend the South's limited coffee supply.
Today in New Orleans, the practice of mixing chicory into coffee is part of the local flavor and a way to add depth for coffee drinkers.
Ground chicory root powder can be found online and in health food stores to mix with coffee or used as a standalone substitute. Sorry, coffee lovers, it contains no caffeine.
The leaves on chicory resemble a dandelion plant, with a rosette of lanceolate leaves 3-10 inches long. Chicory is a perennial but only produces leaves in its first season. The leaves are variable, ranging from irregularly toothed to deeply lobed.
Different than a dandelion, the lobes are not always opposite one another and generally pointing away from the rosette. Some leaves are smooth (glabrous) while others may be roughly hairy. Like a dandelion, it has a relatively large, brown, fleshy, branched taproot with a milky sap.
In following seasons, chicory produces a tough, wiry, erect, branched flower stem with either a spike-like inflorescence or an open branching panicle. The rigid stems with milky sap grow 3-4 feet tall. The upper leaves growing on the flower stems are much smaller than the basal leaves and typically are without lobes and clasp the stem.
The blooms on chicory are easy to spot in fields or road banks. Chicory plants produce numerous flowers, blooming from mid-summer until the first frost in the fall. Each sky blue, or occasionally pink or white, flower is up to 1½ inches wide, with numerous strap-shaped petals (ray flowers), each with 5 sharp teeth at the blunt apex, and no disc flowers.
The ray flowers have blue anthers and blue and white bifurcate styles. There are two rows of bracts surrounding the flower heads, with the outer ones about half as long as inner ones.
In addition to its value as an attractive, edible plant in the garden, chicory attracts pollinators and beneficial insects. Its extended bloom time provides them with a reliable food source for months during the growing season.
If you want to add chicory to your flower garden or wildflower patch, extension recommends directly sowing seeds into the soil in late summer or early fall. You can find chicory seeds in many nursery catalogs. Finding starter plants or growing your own may be challenging because transplanting can be tricky to get started. Great care must be taken to avoid damaging the plant's long taproot.
Enjoy the natural beauty of the chicory flower this time of year, and be bold, try some coffee mixed with chicory root for a unique taste. Contact me at the Wood County WVU Extension Office (304)-424-1960 or e-mail me at jj.barrett@mail.wvu.edu with questions. Good Luck and until next time, Happy Gardening!