LEGENDARY ROOTS WITH A ROMANTIC TOUCH

As chicory roots grow, they store reserves in the form of inulin. After one year of growth, these reserves are used to produce scapes, and the roots are no longer viable. The chicory flowers start blooming at this stage. Chicory plants have plenty of other names, such as blue daisies or blue sailors. The plants depend on sunlight, the flowers open up each morning in a dark blue shade, turn paler at noon and then turn white before closing up each evening. In his poem Metamorphoses, Ovid referred to the legend of Elytra: a young woman who was abandoned by the Sun God, she turned into a chicory flower to watch her lover flee across the sky with melancholy. The chicory flower now symbolises loyalty.