Sandra's Garden: onion you grow for a flower, not for food

Species name: Allium aflatunense

Common name: flowering onion

Location: Sandra's garden

There are two main species of ornamental purple-flowering onions, and this is one of them. The true flowering onion is native to central Asia but has been spread around the world as an ornamental bulb. It produces these brilliant purple globe-like flowers in the spring, seeds in the fall, and then dies off during the winter to regrow the next year. In most areas, reproduction by seed of this plant is abysmal at best so there isn't a risk of it becoming invasive (the growing season isn't long enough for the seeds to germinate, and by the time spring rolls around the winter has killed the seeds in the soil). There are other ornamental onions that don't have purple flowers that are highly invasive species, so make sure you know what you're planting and what you're getting yourself into!

The other species of purple-flowering onions is the giant onion or Allium giganteum. These two species are relatively easily distinguished because the giant onion has a much more densely packed flower head, which is much larger in diameter. It definitely earns its name! Before we moved we had these planted in our garden, and they were one of my favourite flowers we had there. It's a shame I wasn't into plant photography while we were living there; we had some unusual plants in our garden that would be fun to profile. Both the giant onion and the flowering onion are great species to plant in your garden to attract all sorts of pollinators, but especially bees and other pollinating insects.

The flowering onion and the giant onion are both in the same genus as regular onions (A. cepa, which you can read a bit about HERE), chives (A. schoenoprasum), leeks (A. ampeloprasum), and garlic (A. sativum). I have also profiled another member of the genus Allium a while back, garlic chives (which you can read all about HERE).

Like the carrot family, the onion genus is made up of a group of plants that are edible, and a group of plants that you probably don't want to be eating. Unless you are absolutely certain of your plant's identification, you probably shouldn't decide to eat it! The flowering onion and the giant onion are non-edible plants, meaning they won't make you sick if you eat them but they certainly aren't good. Many wild varieties of onions and garlic are so potent they will actually burn your mouth and cause blisters if you try to eat them, let alone the damage they'll cause to your stomach! Some species of onions are also highly toxic to cats and dogs even if they won't harm humans, so make sure you prevent your beloved pets from munching on these species! Most of the time they'll stay away anyway because the smell is potent enough that they figure out it's not good, but when these plants are young they haven't developed their strongest potency yet and might fool even the most discriminating nose into thinking it's grass.

The vampire-hating chives

Species name: Allium tuberosum

Common name: garlic chives

Location: Ontario

There is a "free herb garden" on campus right beside the building that my office and lab are in, mixed in with some non-edible ornamental plants and some giant slabs of different kinds of rocks that were donated by various "rock companies" (most of them are affiliated somehow with the concrete business, but not all; some are granite supply companies). That is, the herb garden is free for the picking as long as you can identify plants; none of them are labelled. It means that if you really, really like sage and can identify it, you've got a perennial sage plant to pick from that's now about 3 feet tall and 3 feet across. Great for "backyard cooks"! The downside of this idea, however, is that many non-native herbs are invasive in North America. Garlic chives are one great example of this. They are native to the Mediterranean region (North Africa and Southern Europe), and are flavour-wise a hybrid between garlic and chives. The plant looks like a chive plant but with white flowers (chives have bright purple flowers), but the leaves taste much more pungent than the chive leaves; the flavour is much more like garlic. I personally have never cooked with them so I can't attest to whether the flavour remains after cooking, but I have tried a leaf raw and oh, my. I'm not about to repeat that purpose any time soon. It was great for clearing the nasal passages, and the room once I opened my mouth to speak! This species is used very commonly in Chinese, Korean and Indian cuisine, and in one traditional dish from Nepal called "dunduko sag."

Should you decide to use this plant as an ornamental and edible species, make sure you keep it under control. We do have quite a few native Allium species in Canada and the United States, and non-natives are much better competitors for resources (they have the same problem in Europe with the North American species, don't worry. It's not a one-way street!). Another danger with this plant is that it's a good example of why you must learn to identify plants properly if you want to be a forager. There are plenty of edible wild species of plants in North America that would make a great addition to any table, raw or cooked. Wild garlic, Allium canadense, which is very morphologically similar to this species, is not one of them. All parts of the plant are incredibly toxic and should never be eaten (cooked or raw; the toxins do not neutralize with heat)! The best way to tell these two species apart is to look at the flowers; in wild garlic the flowers are purple and have purple "bulbets" in the inflorescence between the small flower stalks, and in garlic chives the flowers are white with no bulbets. Wild foraging for food can be incredibly rewarding, but as my supervisor says "you can eat everything once!" Make sure you're confident of the identification of the species of plant (or fungus!) before consumption.