This section is from the book "Harper's Guide To Wild Flowers", by Caroline A. Creevey. Also available from Amazon: Harper's Guide To Wild Flowers.
Family, Composite. Color, bright blue, sometimes purple or pink. Leaves, those on stem oblong or linear. partly clasping, small; those from root lying on the ground, broader at apex, narrowed into long petioles. Stem, from tap-root, covered with bristly hairs, rigid, branching, 1 to 3 feet high. Perennials. 1 to 3 heads of flowers on the ends of branches or in the axils of small leaves.
Succory chicory. (Cichorium Intybus)
A showy plant, but often ragged and covered with dust. Rays or "straps'1 of the flowers conspicuously toothed. Common in waste places, empty lots, and roadsides, around
New York and Brooklyn, and from New England to Iowa. The root, ground, is used as an adulteration for coffee.
 
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