The Benefits of Growing Wild Chicory©
The Benefits of
Growing Wild Chicory©
By Arlene
Wright-Correll
Wild Chicory is a bushy perennial herb with blue, purple, or occasionally white flowers.
Wild Chicory is grown and cultivated for their leaves or for the roots which are baked,
ground, and used as a coffee substitute and additive. The Wild Chicory leaves are used in
salads, often times preferred over the Dandelion. The Wild Chicory leaves are cut and generally blanched, as the
unblanched leaves are bitter. The young blanched heads are also a good
vegetable for cooking, similar to Sea Kale.
Planting outdoors is really simple.
Just plant this perennial in a sunny spot with proper drainage and it
will come back year after year.
One of the biggest benefits is the Finch love the seeds and
since store bought Finch seeds have become more and move expensive over the years;
this is really a simple way of attracting these beautiful birds.
Just about any visitor to New Orleans ,
including myself, has tasted an obligatory cup of the city’s signature blend of
coffee and chicory. But chicory’s varieties and uses extend far beyond a slow
Sunday brunch at Café du Monde.
When cooked, the roots taste like parsnips, but they are
almost too skinny to bother with. Instead of boiling them, however, you can
scrub them and roast them slowly until brittle and dark brown inside. Grind and
brew them like coffee or blend with regular coffee. The resulting beverage
tastes much like coffee but doesn’t contain caffeine.
People, for at least 5,000 years, have cultivated chicory
for its medicinal benefits.
According to the “doctrine of signatures” (a renaissance
theory that a plant’s appearance indicates its healing properties) the milky
sap of chicory demonstrated its efficacy in promoting milk flow in nursing
mothers, or perhaps diminishing it if it were too abundant; it seems to have
been prescribed for both conditions.
The blue of the blossoms and their tendency to close as if
in sleep at noon (in England )
suggested the plant’s use in treating inflamed eyes. The bruised leaves have
been poultices on swellings while root extracts have been used as a diuretic
and laxative, and to treat fevers and jaundice.
The second-century physician Galen called chicory a “friend
of the liver,” and contemporary research has shown that it can increase the
flow of bile, which could be helpful in treating gallstones.
Much laboratory research also has shown root extracts to be
antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and slightly sedative. They also slow and
weaken the pulse and lower blood sugar. Leaf extracts have similar, though
weaker, effects.
Chicory is a good source of folic acid, necessary for the
formation and maturation of red blood cells and in the synthesis of DNA ;
potassium, which is required for the contraction of skeletal and heart muscle
and for the transmission of nerve impulses; and vitamin A. One of the traditional
bitter herbs of Passover, it is eaten as a spring tonic in many cultures.
A compound called maltol (3-hydroxyl-2-methyl-4-pyrone) from
chicory (as well as larch bark, pine needles and roasted malt) is used in baked
goods to intensify the flavor of sugar 30-to-300-fold.
The colonists bought it to America
mainly as a medicinal crop.
Thomas Jefferson and others grew it as a forage crop. Since
it doesn’t dry well, it was usually cut and fed green to horses, cattle, sheep,
poultry and rabbits.
As I said it is an easy to grow perennial and the thing I
like the best of it is it attracts the finch and I really enjoy watching these
birds flit around these lovely blue flowers.
May the Creative
Force be with you,
Arlene Wright-Correll
Labels: Arlene Wright-Correll, chicory seeds, food, growing, Home Farm Herbery, medical benefits, planting
posted by askarlene @ 10:44 AM
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