Chicory

The amazing details in such a common wildflower, an ethereal shade of blue.

It’s a tough plant, upright, sturdy, will grow out of cracks in pavement and out of hard-packed clay soil dried hard by summer sun in both open fields and empty urban lots. The stems that need to be cut to gather flowers, none of using my thumbnail to pick them, and I learned very young that they don’t like to be picked from their plant—the flowers begin to shrivel almost immediately. So I need to appreciate them where they stand.

And this is the plant from which chicory root coffee and other beverages are made. They are related to dandelions—you can see the resemblance in the shape of the flower petals and in the stamens—and the roots are just as long and tough to dig up. I’ve long intended but never actually made my own chicory coffee. I’d rather just take pictures.

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