SUMMER'S DAZZLING BLUE

Whether you call it Chicory, Blue Sailor, or one of at least a half-dozen alternate common names—or maybe know it by its scientific name, Cichorium intybus—surely you'll agree this ubiquitous plant is as pretty as anything from the garden. Tall enough to get noticed, with bright daisylike flowers up to a couple inches across and blue as a summer sky. Just seeing a clump beside a country road immediately lifts my spirits. 

Yes, the plant has a long, long history of use medicinally, in dye-making, and as forage for livestock. In the kitchen you can use various parts in all sorts of dishes, including the dried, ground root as an additive—or even substitute—to coffee. And no, it's naturalized rather than a native…like me, a fellow citizen descended from immigrant stock. 

But I say forget all that. Just take the time to give the blooms a slow, close look. Isn't it dazzling! And isn't that reason aplenty to welcome this delightful plant to the summer landscape? After all, a wildflower doesn't have to be rare to be beautiful.

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SUMMER'S BLUE

My mother, and most of the folks I grew up around, always called them Blue Sailors—though Dad, the botanist, would occasionally add that the more common name for the rather scraggly wayside plant with the cheery blue blooms was chicory. By either designation, it was a familiar plant, appearing along the shoulder of the road, on the sides of the shortcut path across the junkyard wasteland where Old Man Gardner parked his wrecked and rusting cars, and in the sunny, hard-packed corner behind the garden.

One thing my father pointed out me about chicory was how the flowers, one of the first to open with dawn's new light, were also likely to be closed up tight by noon—though on cloudy days, the blooms might remain open all day…or not open at all. 

Uncle Howard, whose travels occasionally took him to New Orleans, would sometimes bring back cans of chicory-laced coffee. Chicory roots, roasted and ground, are added to to the coffee as a flavor enhancer. In fact, during times when coffee has been in short supply, or simply too expensive to afford, ground chicory has regularly been wholly substituted for coffee.       

Like so many everyday things, plebeian chicory is often given no more than a passing glance. And yet, when you examine the sky-blue daisy-like flower up close, they are simply exquisite. For some reason, the darker blue stamens always remind me of candles on a cake. Come to think of it, a country byway blue-spattered on either side by dense swathes of chicory blooms, is one of summer's most delightful visual celebrations.

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