Common chicory is a perennial plant from the Compositae family. Other names: rat root, batogs, batogs, batog, Petrovbatig, Petrov’s batog, Petrov’s batogs, blue batogs.
Description:
Perennial with a thick, very long spindle-shaped root; stem 30-100 cm tall, erect, branched, with sharply rough unequal-toothed leaves. Baskets are blue, rarely pink or white, all reed; achenes are gray-yellow, with denticles at the top. It blooms all summer. It grows in weedy places, fallows, along roads. Doesn’t happen often.
Contains active substances:
In the flowers of chicory there is a glycoside chicorin, in the milky juice there are bitter substances – lactucin, lactucopicrin, taraxasterol, the fruits contain protocatechin aldehyde, in the roots – inulin, alkaloids.
Medicinal use:
Chicory is used mainly in the form of water decoctions of the whole plant or its aerial part. They drink with prolapse of the stomach and various stomach pains, with nervous diseases, fainting, diarrhea, cystitis, when bitten by rabid animals; decoction of herbs wash wounds, make compresses for eczema; the root is used for jaundice, the herb for “failure” of the stomach, juice for fever. The plant is officially in France as a tonic, gastric, in homeopathy for diseases of the liver and gallbladder.