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Chicory




Chicory, Cichorium intybus, is a bushy perennial herbaceous plant with blue, lavender, or occasionally white flowers.

Various varieties are cultivated for salad leaves, chicons, or for roots, which are baked, ground, and used as a coffee substitute and additive.

It is also grown as a forage crop for livestock.

It lives as a wild plant on roadsides in its native Europe, and in North America and Australia, where it has become naturalized.

When flowering, chicory has a tough, grooved, and more or less hairy stem, from 30 to 100 centimetres tall.

The leaves are stalked, lanceolate and unlobed.

The flower heads are 2 to 4 centimetres wide, and bright blue.

There are two rows of involucral bracts - the inner are longer and erect, the outer are shorter and spreading.

It flowers from July until October.

The achenes have no pappu but have toothed scales on top.

Root chicory contains volatile oils similar to those found in plants in the related genus Tanacetum which includes Tansy, and is similarly effective at eliminating intestinal worms.

All parts of the plant contain these volatile oils, with the majority of the toxic components concentrated in the plant's root.

Chicory is well known for its toxicity to internal parasites.

Chicory was used as a treatment in Germany, and is recorded in many books as an ancient German treatment for everyday ailments.

It is variously used as a tonic and as a treatment for gallstones, gastro-enteritis, sinus problems and cuts and bruises.

Inulin, the dietary fiber found in Chicory, finds application in diabetes and constipation.

Chicory has demonstrated antihepatotoxic potential in animal studies.