Blue sailors
by Sonali Gangane
Title
Blue sailors
Artist
Sonali Gangane
Medium
Painting - Watercolor On Watercolor Paper
Description
Common chicory, Cichorium intybus,[1] is a somewhat woody, perennial herbaceous plant usually with bright blue flowers, rarely white or pink. Various varieties are cultivated for salad leaves, chicons (blanched buds), or for roots (var. sativum), which are baked, ground, and used as a coffee substitute and additive. It is also grown as a forage crop for livestock.[2] It lives as a wild plant on roadsides in its native Europe, and in North America and Australia, where it has become naturalized."Chicory" is also the common name in the United States for curly endive (Cichorium endivia); these two closely related species are often confused.Common chicory is also known as blue sailors, succory, and coffeeweed. It is also called "cornflower", although that name is more commonly applied to Centaurea cyanus. Common names for varieties of var. foliosum include endive, radicchio, Belgian endive, French endive, red endive, sugarloaf and witloof or witlof.
Description:When flowering, chicory has a tough, grooved, and more or less hairy stem, from 30 to 100 centimetres (10 to 40 in) tall.
The leaves are stalked, lanceolate and unlobed.The flower heads are 2 to 4 centimetres (0.79 to 1.6 in) wide, and usually bright blue, rarely white or pink. There are two rows of involucral bracts; the inner are longer and erect, the outer are shorter and spreading. It flowers from July until October.The achenes have no pappus (feathery hairs), but do have toothed scales on top.Leaf chicoryWild:Wild chicory leaves are usually bitter. Their bitterness is appreciated in certain cuisines, such as in the Liguria and Puglia regions of Italy and also in Catalonia (Spain), in Greece and in Turkey. In Ligurian cuisine the wild chicory leaves are an ingredient of preboggion and in Greek cuisine of horta; in the Puglian region wild chicory leaves are combined with fava bean puree in the traditional local dish Fave e Cicorie Selvatiche.By cooking and discarding the water the bitterness is reduced, after which the chicory leaves may be sauteed with garlic, anchovies and other ingredients. In this form the resulting greens might be combined with pasta or accompany meat dishes.
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Thanks for viewing.2013©Sonali T. Gangane
Uploaded
January 24th, 2013
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