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Harmless🍽️ Edible💊 Medicinal

🩵 Chicory

Cichorium intybus · Asteraceae

🌳 Temperate Europe🫒 Mediterranean
🧠 To remember it"Chicory sleeps in the afternoon" — its blue flowers, open in the morning, close around noon; Linnaeus used it to tell time in his floral clock.
Chicory — Cichorium intybus

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Rigid plant, branched at right angles, famous for its large sky-blue flowers that only open in the morning and close around noon — a trait so reliable that Linnaeus used it in his floral clock. Its long, bitter taproot is roasted to make chicory coffee substitute.

  1. sky-blue flowers (rarely white or pink) 3-4 cm wide, open in the morning only
  2. tough, angular stems, branching almost at right angles
  3. basal rosette leaves cut like dandelion leaves, stem leaves reduced and clasping
  4. flower heads sitting directly on the stem, without visible stalk
  5. white taproot, very bitter, oozing a milky latex
Size40-120 cm
Floweringjuillet-octobre
Habitatwastelands, embankments, edges of fields and paths, dry calcareous soils

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Cornflower (blue flowers as well, but completely different plant) (Centaurea cyanus)none, cornflower is edible too

To tell them apart: cornflower grows in cereal crops, has a greyish downy stem and narrow entire leaves; chicory has a rigid angular stem and deeply lobed leaves in a basal rosette

🍽️ Eating it

Partsyoung leaves, root, flowers
Seasonmars-mai (young leaves), automne (root)
Tastepronounced bitterness, stronger in the root

Preparation : bitter young leaves in salads or blanched to reduce bitterness (same technique used for Belgian endive/witloof, which is the same species grown in the dark); root dried, then roasted and ground as a caffeine-free coffee substitute

💊 Healing with it

traditionally digestive and choleretic (stimulates bile secretion), thanks to the inulin and sesquiterpene lactones in the root

Level of evidence : traditional use — ethnobotanical compilations (Fournier, PFAF)

⚠️ avoid if you have a bile duct obstruction; possible cross-allergy with other Asteraceae

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • roasted root used as a caffeine-free coffee substitute since Napoleon's Continental Blockade (1806), when real coffee was scarce in Europe
Sources (2)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.