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Cichorium intybus var. foliosum
Belgian endive is a blanched, compact head of pale leaves forced from the second-year sprout of a chicory root, usually grown as a winter vegetable rather than a houseplant. The key to growing it is a two-stage process: grow roots in the field, then force the sprouts in the dark.
Belgian endive (Cichorium intybus), also known as witloof ("white leaf") chicory or chicon, is a lettuce-like vegetable or salad green. Belgian endive was developed in Belgium in the 1850s and is nicknamed "white gold" in that country. In 2021 Brussels added it to the region's Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The plant is a biennial which had been primarily grown for the value of its first-season root in producing the beverage chicory. It had not been exploited for its second season until the development of the second-year sprout as a vegetable in Belgium.
According to one legend, the technique for growing blanched endives was accidentally discovered in the mid-1800s when a chicory farmer named Jan Lammers returned from military duty and discovered the roots he had stored had sprouted and the sprouts were good to eat. Another version of the story is that a botanist named François (or perhaps Frans) Breziers, a chief gardener at the Brussels Botanical Garden, developed the Belgian endive in an equally happy accident. In Belgium the vegetable is called witloof or chicon and is nicknamed "white gold".
Cultivated endive · Chicory · Wild Endive · Spiny Chicory · Chicory
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Belgian endive by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
