Explain plan on a Select query

I’m a bit confused on an explain plan I just generated for a select statement. The plan’s first line begins with the word “Append” followed by the usual (cost....) data. What in the world is an Append doing here? I’ve recently performed another analyze on the table, btw.

Also, the query does not seem to be using an index, as the explain shows a pair of sequential scans, speaking of which, the second sequential scan shows it’s on a table, called <table>_test. Which is a little strange, considering that does not exist.

The query’s where clause is on a varchar(25) field. And that field has both a btree index and a trigram index on it. I’ve tried using where =, like, and ~ in order to see if I can get it to use an index. All attempts continue to say sequential scan.
—
Jay
>
Sent from my iPad