What is chicory?

Chicory identification is easiest on a summer morning, when its clear blue flowers are wide open along stiff, wiry stems. It’s a perennial from Europe and western Asia, the same species that gives us radicchio, Belgian endive and the roasted root sometimes blended into coffee.

On roadsides it’s a pretty, harmless wildflower that also feeds bees. It only becomes a weed when it settles into a lawn, a gravel area or a garden bed, where its long taproot makes it hard to evict.

Chicory identification: what to look for

Chicory looks completely different depending on the time of year, so check both stages:

• Rosette: in spring and in mowed turf it stays as a low cluster of lance-shaped, deeply toothed leaves. They’re easy to mistake for dandelion and often grow right alongside it, though chicory leaves are often a bit rougher and have stiff hairs along the midrib underneath.
• Flower stem: left unmowed, it sends up a tough, grooved, branching stem 1 to 4 feet tall with only a few small leaves that clasp the stem.
• Flowers: about an inch to an inch and a half across, sky blue (occasionally white or pink), with petal tips cut square and fringed. They sit right against the stem, open in the morning and usually close by early afternoon. Blooming runs from early summer into fall.
• Sap and root: break a leaf or stem and you’ll see milky sap. Dig and you’ll find a thick, brown taproot that can go down well over a foot.

Where it grows in Pennsylvania

Chicory likes sun, heat and dry, lean soil. In central PA it’s a fixture of road shoulders, old farm fields, railroad beds, gravel parking areas and quarry edges. It handles alkaline, limestone-influenced soils and hard-packed fill without trouble.

In home landscapes you’ll mostly find it at the thin, dry edge of the lawn next to a road or driveway, in stone mulch beds and along fence lines that don’t get mowed often.

Chicory look-alikes

In bloom, few plants match chicory’s blue. The rosette is a different story:

• Dandelions have nearly identical rosettes. The difference shows when they flower: dandelion has a hollow, leafless stalk topped by one yellow head, while chicory has a solid, branching stem with blue flowers.
• Prickly lettuce has a row of small spines along the underside of the leaf midrib and pale yellow flowers.
• Cornflower (bachelor’s button) can be a similar blue, but its leaves are narrow and gray-green and its flower is a cluster of little trumpets.

How to get rid of chicory

Digging: for a few plants, dig rather than pull. A long dandelion digger or a narrow spade works best when the soil is moist in spring or fall, since dry, hard ground snaps the root. Loosen the soil around the crown first, then lever the whole root up slowly. Get as much of the taproot as you can; a broken root will often send up a new rosette, so expect to repeat on a few plants.

Mowing: regular mowing keeps chicory from flowering and seeding, though it won’t kill the root. If it’s in a field or along a bank, mowing before the plants set seed in late summer limits new seedlings.

Cultural control: chicory wins where turf is thin and dry. Thickening the lawn is your long-term fix:

• Overseed thin areas in late summer or early fall with a drought-tolerant grass such as turf-type tall fescue.
• Mow at 3 to 4 inches so the grass shades the soil.
• Test your soil and correct pH and fertility as the results recommend.
• In stone or gravel areas, pull young rosettes before the taproot gets established.

Herbicides: in lawns, selective broadleaf products containing 2,4-D, dicamba, triclopyr or MCPP control chicory, especially when applied to actively growing plants in early fall. Because of the deep root, a follow-up treatment may be needed. Read and follow the product label every time; the label is the law. Check that the product is labeled for your site, since lawn, bed and vegetable-garden products are not interchangeable. Applying herbicide for hire in Pennsylvania requires a PA Department of Agriculture pesticide applicator certification, so if the whole yard needs treatment, hire a licensed lawn-care company.

Keeping it from coming back

Most new chicory in a yard comes from seed that blows or washes in from roadside plants nearby. Keeping your turf dense and mowing before seed heads ripen are the simplest ways to keep it out.

If you actually like the flowers, consider leaving a strip along the road or a back field edge unmowed. It’s a good pollinator plant and isn’t on any Pennsylvania noxious weed list. Just keep it out of beds and lawn areas where you want a cleaner look, and cut the stalks before they shed seed toward the yard.

Questions we get about chicory

Similar weeds

DandelionTaraxacum officinalePrickly LettuceLactuca serriolaQueen Anne's Lace (Wild Carrot)Daucus carota