You are bidding on about 50 COMMON CHICORY SEEDS (Cichorium intybus.
It is also called blue daisy, blue sailor, wild bachelor's button, blue or Italian dandelion, or even coffeeweed, to list just a few of its many names.
This is one of the few perennial plants that flowers from June until the first frost in the fall. During a dry summer you may notice that there are patches of light blue-purple flowers everywhere. Even when brown grass surrounds these little islands of hope, the chicory is thriving.
Early in the growing season, chicory is only visible at ground level as a rosette of irregularly-toothed leaves. At this state it is remarkably similar to dandelion. These can grow 3 to 5 feet high, with tough, spiky, branching stems.
Each flower only blooms for a day; during hot weather they remain open only for a short time in the morning but on cooler or cloudier days may stay open nearly all day. The flowers are between 1 and 2 inches (2.5 to 5 cm.) wide and a clear blue, with up to 20 ribbon-like ray petals.
Chicory is grown to produce inulin, the active ingredient in some fiber supplements. If you have ever been to New Orleans, you probably have had coffee mixed with chicory.
Chicory has a long history of herbal use and is especially of great value for its tonic affect upon the liver and digestive tract. It is little used in modern herbalism, though it is often used as part of the diet. The root and the leaves are appetizer, cholagogue, depurative, digestive, diuretic, hypoglycaemic, laxative and tonic. The roots are more active medicinally. A decoction of the root has proved to be of benefit in the treatment of jaundice, liver enlargement, gout and rheumatism. A decoction of the freshly harvested plant is used for treating gravel. The root can be used fresh or dried, it is best harvested in the autumn. The leaves are harvested as the plant comes into flower and can also be dried for later use. The root extracts have experimentally produced a slower and weaker heart rate (pulse). The plant merits research for use in heart irregularities. The plant is used in Bach flower remedies - the keywords for prescribing it are "Possessiveness", "Self-love" and "Self-pity". The latex in the stems is applied to warts in order to destroy them.
Leaves - raw or cooked. The leaves are rather bitter, especially when the plants are flowering. The blanched leaves are often used in winter salads (they are known as chicons) and are also cooked. The unblanched leaves are much less bitter in winter and make an excellent addition to salads at this time of year.
Flowers - raw. An attractive addition to the salad bowl, but rather bitter. Root - cooked like parsnip. The boiled young roots form a very palatable vegetable. The root is said to be an ideal food for diabetics because of its inulin content.
The roots have the potential to be used for the production of biomass for industrial use. They are rich in the starch "inulin" which can easily be converted to alcohol. A blue dye has been obtained from the leaves. The flowers are an alternative ingredient of "QR" herbal compost activator. This is a dried and powdered mixture of several herbs that can be added to a compost heap in order to speed up bacterial activity and thus shorten the time needed to make the compost