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WELCOME TO OUR FIRST IN A SERIES OF BLOG POSTS RELATED TO OUR SARE-FUNDED SDSU RESEARCH PROJECT 

Chicory has locally become an unwanted, invasive plant in pastures, hay grounds, and crop lands. While once limited to a small area, chicory has now spread to expanses previously free of the plant. Attempts have been made to control its encroachment, but these efforts have been met with mixed results. Therefore, we decided to make a concerted effort to study and research methods to determine what practices can effectively be used to control the plant.
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Very soon, we will be putting our plan into practice. We are eager to share the evolution of our research project with you and we invite you to follow our project’s progress. Before we present you with the details of the methods of weed control that we will use, we feel it may be helpful to provide some background information to lay a foundation for why we are doing what we are hoping to accomplish. 

Chicory - Friend or Foe?

​When trying to deal with any problematic weed, it’s a good idea to learn as much as you can about it to figure out what makes it tick, so to speak. While researching for our chicory control project, I often had a recurring thought: “Why are we trying to eradicate something that many people find beneficial in countless ways?” A quick internet search of “chicory” shows a dozen ways the plant is used for the betterment of the lives of humans and animals alike. It can aid in treating many medical aliments. There are recipes available to use chicory for salads and other culinary dishes. It makes a wonderful coffee substitute and food additive. It is grown for livestock forage and, when consumed, can actually help reduce parasites in animals. A person can even order seeds to plant it! And this is just the tip of the information iceberg. So instead of trying to control chicory, why aren’t we doing what we can to make it thrive?

What Is Chicory?

​Common chicory (Cichorium intybus) is a biennial or perennial, warm-season, herbaceous plant of the dandelion family. There are a number of cultivated, planted varieties of chicory. One variety, if grown under carefully managed conditions, can be as nutritious as other forage crops including alfalfa. “Tame” chicory (again, the planted variety) has numerous uses as previously mentioned. However, once the plant “bolts” (grows from the leafy stage into three to six-foot-high stems), the feed and food values drop. If not managed, as we have observed, chicory has a tendency to encroach into dry prairie areas and can become a problem. Chicory has now been listed as a noxious weed in some states and British Columbia. Beginning in 2019, chicory will once again be listed as an invasive, noxious weed in Lawrence County of South Dakota.

How Does Chicory Propagate?

Some online sites claim chicory’s existing plant population begins to drop after the biennial (two-year) life span of the plant is reached. Others, however, note that under more agreeable growing conditions, chicory can survive for at least five years or longer.

Still other sites note chicory does not spread or re-seed itself. That has not been the observations we have made. Our experience is that chicory can reproduce from existing plants as seen in these photos of plants from one of our pastures.

​While we cannot be certain whether growth in the spring is strictly from last year’s plants (as noted above) or whether it can be attributed to new growth from seeds, we do know that plants have begun to grow in areas where a stand of chicory had previously not existed. One can only surmise that would occur from a new seedling taking root.

Why Control Chicory?

To put it simply, many things, if left uncontrolled, can become a problem. With plants, one species can invade an area and begin to negatively compete with the existing desirable plants. When this happens, steps may need to be taken to get the unwanted guest under control.
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What may be beneficial and raised successfully in one part of the country (or state) may not be so valuable in another environmental setting. For example, in our semi-arid area in western South Dakota, the native and valued introduced range plants are tough. But in periods of drought, these species can become stressed. They fail to compete with other plants that have deeper roots and, ultimately, are crowded out. Chicory is one of those deep-rooted plants.

Some plant species are desirable, to a point. Chicory is, again, such an example. When the plant is young and tender, it may be palatable to livestock. But as it becomes more mature and the plant changes from a leafy, succulent mass to a three-foot nearly leafless stem, livestock tend to avoid it. If left alone, it will then produce an abundance of seeds that can grow into more chicory plants that can choke out other more productive plants. It is not uncommon for us to observe areas of chicory in which the plants have become so numerous that there is a nearly complete absence of grasses or forage plants.

​Finally, when a producer is growing a crop—be it for grain, forage or other market—it is necessary to keep the crop as clean and pure as possible. The inclusion of other plants like chicory can seriously reduce the quality and usefulness of the intended product. Control of the invasive plant then becomes a requirement.

What's Planned?

In our next post scheduled for mid-May, we will explain in further detail what IWM is all about. We will also explain the preparations that have been underway. We invite you to join us and stay tuned through our social media sources. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to our newsletter to have our blog posts sent directly to your inbox.