Beautiful Weed

When I first moved to this area and saw this flower growing wild along the highway, I fell in love with the beautiful color.
I was very surprised to find it was Chicory especially since I'd heard of its use as a coffee substitute.

Here is Wickipedia's info on it:
Common chicory, Cichorium intybus, is a bushy perennial herbaceous plant with blue, lavender, or occasionally white flowers. Various varieties are cultivated for salad leaves, chicons (blanched buds), or for roots (var. sativum), which are baked, ground, and used as a coffee substitute and additive. It is also grown as a forage crop for livestock. It lives as a wild plant on roadsides in its native Europe, and in North America and Australia, where it has become naturalized.

"Chicory" is also the common name in the US (and in French) for curly endive (Cichorium endivia); these two closely related species are often confused

It is so pretty I don't know why someone hasn't hybridized it to make an addition to the flower garden although it does look similar to a Batchelor Button.                                            I picked a bouquet and put it in a vase but apparently it doesn't like being picked because within just a few hours it was completely dead.

It can grow quite tall, up to waist height but if you mow it as they did along the highway, it will bloom at a few inches.   It's definitely one of my favorite weeds.