Endive

The endive is a vegetable that belongs to the Asteraceae family, in which more than 1,000 genus and 20,000 species are included, and very few of them are grown.

This family, whose name comes from the Greek Aster (star), is characterised by flowers made from the fusion of hundreds or even thousands of smaller flowers, as in the sunflower. Many kinds of vegetables belong to this family:  leaf vegetables such as chicory, lettuce, endive and curly endive; flower vegetables such as artichokes or stem vegetables such as thistle.

The endive is actually one kind of chicory obtained through forced or artificial growth.