INVADERS' SALAD: CHICORY
The Monday Garden, Eco-gardening at its best
July 13, 2003, Issue 68, updated as Issue 168 June 12, 2005
Where ever Eurasian humans have gone, they have taken chicory with them as well as such other mixed blessings as garlic mustard, house cats, and Norway rats. Accordingly, North American humans share the joy of sky-blue chicory along a hot, dusty road in mid-summer (and also share the work of weeding it out of the vegetable garden) with other members of their species in temperate regions as far way as Algeria, Albania; Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Austria, and Australia (just to survey the A’s).
Picture: chicory flower with a small, beneficial pollinator. Bedford Street, Stamford CT June 2004.
"Hardy" is a woefully insufficient word to describe chicory, pictured below in the "lawn" of my local police station during the severe drought of 2002. Like that other European invader, Queen Anne's lace of the carrot clan, chicory is blessed (or armed, depending on your point-of-view) with a deep taproot. Indeed, during a late summer drought in the Northeast, Queen Anne’s lace and chicory are often only plants blooming along the roadside.