Radicchio is perrenial - take two

Late last night, I was overcome by the desire to again tackle the untangling of chicory names in order to determine just which ones exactly are perrenial. Well, I think I may have cracked it (feel free to disagree). In fact, I feel so confident, I am going to write it as a fact.

Hortiphilia Fact:

For gardeners the chicory family is broken into two sections
Endives which are annual/biennual &
Chicories, which includes radicchio which are perrenial

Your really that sure? It turns out that I needed to look into the latin. To repeat the above in scientific sounding terms: The chicory relatives that we commonly consume in our salads are broken into two names:

1. Cichorium endivia - endive, escarole types
   
2. Cichorium intybus - radicchio, sugarloaf, root chicory and forcing chicory otherwise known as belgian endive/witoof, cutting chicory, italian dandelion, asparagus chicory, others known as 'chicory'

So if you want to try and make a perrenial bed of chicories, then you would choose from the second category. I have yet to research how well the 'endivia' group self-seeds.

By the way, I did read on a seed company webpage that they suggest reseeding radicchio every year for better quality (or more sales?). We shall see.

Once again, stay tuned to see how my chicory bed turns out...

Go to Radicchio is Perrenial? - take one

Links (only the most succinct of the webpages I was dredging...)

http://www.floridata.com/ref/c/cich_end.cfm

http://www.floridata.com/ref/C/cich_int.cfm