🌿 BLUE SAILORS 🌿 Local Roadside Wildflower Seeds

"Blue Sailors"
(Cichorium intybus) 
A resident of Shaw Island roadsides.

Common Name: Blue Sailors

Life Style: Hardy, perennial herb.

Native Growing Region: Europe and the Near East. Common on roadsides in the San Juan Islands.

Flower: fine sky blue, July to October. "This may be the only plant of our area that can be instantly recognized by color alone." (Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest from Alaska to Northern California by Lewis J. Clark.)

Tolerates: Drought. Deer.

Description: Can reach 3' to 5' if growing in an area not mowed by roadside work crews.

Soil: Light, preferably alkaline. Sunny and open.

Uses: Can be grown for culinary purposes and for a nutritious pasture and fodder for animals. Dried petals are used for potpourri. Buds can be pickled. This European immigrant has been cultivated for many years, both for its leaves and roots. The roots are sliced, roasted, and ground as an additive to coffee. Europeans familiar from an early age with chicory-flavored coffee consider as improvements the added color, bitterness, and body. 

Chicory is often grown in floral clocks for the regular opening of its flowers and their closing five hours later. These opening times relate to latitude, but the leaves always align with the north. Gardeners interested in metaphysics credit this plant with life-giving forces.

This plant is mentioned by Scott Atkinson and drawn by Fred Sharpe in their wonderful Wild Plants of the San Juan Islands. 

Notes: great data listed here

"Wild chicory"
A.K.A. "Blue Sailors"
Seed packets are available at the
Shaw Island Gatehouse,
Squaw Bay Road, 
Shaw Island, WA.