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NOXIOUS
WEED |
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Cichorium
intybus
(Chicory) Asteraceae (Sunflower Family) Foothills. Fields, openings, disturbed areas.
Summer, fall. Even alien weeds can have great beauty. Everyone knows Chicory, perhaps not by name but certainly by sight. Chicory is abundant in lower elevation fields, often growing so thickly that it imparts a blue cast to the field in mid-summer. Flower heads are made up only of ray flowers that are sky blue to light lavender. Stems are thick and strong and 2 to 5 feet tall with few small leaves above a basal rosette of long narrow, often upright leaves. Chicory has a long blooming period from mid-summer to
fall.
"Cichorium" is, according to
William A. Weber, an "alteration of the Arabian name" for
Chicory and according to the online Botanical Dictionary,
"intybus" is "derived from [the] Egyptian [word] "tybi",
"January", the month that it was customarily eaten".
In 1753 Linnaeus named this species and this genus; the genus contains
seven European species. |
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Cichorium intybus
(Chicory) Asteraceae (Sunflower Family) Foothills. Fields, openings, disturbed areas.
Summer, fall. The first basal leaves of Chicory might be mistaken for Dandelion leaves, but the leaves quickly become much larger, vertical, and darker green. The long green wiry flower stalks also quickly distinguish Chicory from Dandelion. |
Range map © John Kartesz,
County Color Key
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Range map for Cichorium intybus |