Sandy La Rose, age 13, of Lancaster, Penna., for the question:
What is chicory?
Who says a weed is useless and ugly? The chicory is a weed handsome enough to grow in a garden and useful enough to be cultivated. What's more, it is not a native American. It was brought to the New World from Europe. First it was planted along the eastern seaboard where it thrived because it enjoys the sea air. Then it moved west, mile by mile over the plans and prairies. Maybe it had some help in crossing the Rockies. Now it is a wayside weed from coast to coast.
The chicory is a blue‑eyed daisy, tall as a third grader. It is a slim, erect plant with jagged green‑grey leaves. Its blossoms sit like saucers, one above the other up the tall stem. Once in a great while the flowers are pink or white. Most often they are heavenly blue, the color of the sky midway between the deep azure overhead and the milky blue at the horizon.
The wayside gardens of wild flowers are most colorful in high summer. From July to October, the chicory adds its saucer flowers to the array. They look like strips of blue ribbon medals pinned among the competing wild flowers. Chicory flowers open only in the sunshine. They close up at night in the rain and on cloudy days.
The chicory plant has long tap roots which enable it to drain moisture from very poor soil. However, it cannot grow in arid or even in semi arid soil. For that reason we do not find it along the highways through the southwestern deserts.
The alias of this wild blue daisy is the coffee weed. Its root is washed, roasted and ground to make a coffee substitute. Some people add a little chicory to a coffee bean mixture to give a tangy flavor. The delicious coffee of the Southland, especially in New Orleans, gets its flavor from a dash of chicory. In a pinch, coffee can be brewed from pure chicory. The covered wagoners had no coffee. They brewed coffee from chicory roots, which explains how this wayside weed was helped on its way across the continent.
Nowadays, acres of chicory arc grown for coffee ingredient. The best varieties come from sandy soils in the tropics. Still more chicory is grown for salads. The crisp, deep toothed leaves grow in a wad at the base of the stem. They range from dark green to white and add an artistic touch to the everyday salad lettuce.
The chicory is a member of the largest of all flower families ‑Compositae. Throughout the world, it has at least 13,000 cousins. A great number of them are yellow daisies. The black‑eyed Susan is a cousin of the chicory. The big sunflower is the giant of the family. The golden ragweed is a composite, so are the brassy dandelions, the yellow sneezeweeds, the tarweeds of the far west and the hooked sticktights that grow in meadows from coast to coast.
The starry eyed asters belong to the purple blue branch of the daisy family. So do the thistles and the tassel‑topped iron weeds of the east and the south. All these wild flowers found the soil suitable for them to thrive as native Americans. The soil was just as suitable for chicory, their handsome and useful cousin from Europe.