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Earth Matters : Blue is the rarest color: An ode to chicory, a perennial wildflower with a storied cultural history

By Katie Koerten

I’ve written in the Earth Matters column twice before about the magic of the color blue in nature. First, in “It’s not easy being blue in nature,” I wrote about how rare blue is in nature due to its relative costliness to produce. Then I described the two pigments found in bird eggs in “Cracking the mystery of how birds’ eggs are blue.” Today I want to share with you what made me fall in love with blue in the first place: chicory.