One of the questions we often get asked at this time of year is about a certaion plant, near to the visitor centre. Quite large, and with striking large, powder blue flowers. What is it?
Well, the plant in question is chicory. It grows up to a metre or more in height, and can often be seen along roadsides. The blue flowers are great for all sorts of insects, including bees, hoverflies and butterflies. The whole area next to the visitor centre is being kept as a wild flower strip, with that very thought in mind.
Chicory is pretty useful for us humans too. It is grown as a forage crop for livestock, but can also be eaten by us. In its wild form it is rather bitter (though does appear in the cuisine of Catalonia, Albania, Greece, Turkey and parts of Italy). It can be cultivated, and you have probably eaten it yourself. Radicchio, the red leaved salad plant, is in fact a cultivated form of chicory. The roots too can be useful. Dried and ground, they can be used to make a substitute for or addition to coffee. During the two world wars 'camp coffee', made using chicory, was drunk due to the difficulties of bringing actual coffee in past the U-boat blockade.
This use in coffee accounts for an alternative name for chicory, the 'coffeeweed'. Mind you, it does have quite a few names. Blue daisy, blue dandelion, blue sailors, blue weed, bunk, cornflower (not to be confused with the true cornflower, another blue flower of meadows and roadsides), hendibeh, horseweed, ragged sailors, succory, wild batchelor's buttons and wild endive. Phew!
Reedbed, freshwater scrapes, saltmarsh and wet meadow. Frampton Marsh has it all! Come and pay us a visit soon.
Getting through a bottle of "Camp Coffee" at the moment. Ah, the memories it brings back! Still it is very much an acquired taste.
I wonder what that was that just flew past??