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Post by kazedwards on Apr 29, 2014 10:57:56 GMT -5
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Post by blueadzuki on Apr 29, 2014 11:37:51 GMT -5
Looks like Crow Garlic (Allium vineale) to me, or maybe field garlic , unfortunately. If it is a new plant it often will only have one clove so could easily be confused with an onion. And in any case crow garlic cloves in sort of a "satellite" method (one big clove in the center that develops little cloves on it's sides, unlike the sort of wheel-like arrangement most garlics will take. The reason I say "unfortunately" is that crow garlic 1. is rather invasive and 2. doesn't really taste all that good (this applies to field garlic as well).
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Post by kazedwards on Apr 29, 2014 12:12:07 GMT -5
Well I have never seen it before and it is poping up in a few places in the yard. It should be pretty easy to get rid of. It is still ineresting. I have a friend that live about 50 miles away that has wild garlic. He says that the scapes are really good sautéed.
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Post by oldmobie on Apr 29, 2014 14:42:38 GMT -5
Well at first I thought this was wild garlic but then I took a closer look at the leaves and they aren't flat like garlic. They are like onion leaves but I have never heard of wild onions. It does have a bulb and does not appear to have cloves. We have wild onions here, but they don't look like your pictures. They tend to grow in clumps of 20 or more plants, (never counted) and only seem to grow 6" - 8" tall. |
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Post by paquebot on May 2, 2014 13:13:16 GMT -5
Generally, garlic will have flat leaves and onions will have round leaves. The range of the wild onion, Allium drummondii, extends from about the Mississippi River westward to the Rockies and then Mexico and California. It is not common here but wild garlic, Allium canadense, is much too common in places.
Martin
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Post by mnjrutherford on May 14, 2014 7:53:01 GMT -5
We have this here and it spreads like wildfire. Good luck getting rid of it. My research says that despite the round leaves, it is indeed "wild garlic" AND it is edible. Considered a delicacy in the Korean community.
I am not a plant expert so I have to say that my ID is probably not as accurate as Blue's nor Paquebot's. I CAN tell you that it will never develop more than one bulb. I can also tell you that I would not eat this stuff unless I was in a starvation situation. I DID try it. The entire plant is tough and fibrous no matter how you prep it nor what stage you harvest it.
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Post by blueadzuki on May 14, 2014 15:14:15 GMT -5
I never said it was inedible, I said it was not pleasant; an opinion you evidently also share.
And that really should be "nearly never" develops more than one clove (actually it often does, but the sub cloves tend to be tiny and often not noticable (as I said before, rather than the "shelled cloves around a central axis/scape" arrangement of domestic garlic, crow garlic is more along the lines of "one big shell-less clove in the middle, with the scape (if there is one) fitting into a groove along one side with tiny sub cloves which may or may not have shells (the ouside ones generally do, the inside one's don't)stuck in little notches in the big clove/the skin). Every now and again, I come across a sofneck domestic garlic clove that has that arrangement as well (usually at the kind of organic supermarkets where they buy thier garlic local, but don't bother to ask what kind they are getting.) but it seems to be the exception there, for crow, it's the rule. At least it's USUALLY the rule. That's why I said never. Usually, crow garlic when it does make multi cloves, cleaves the micro cloves off very readily, and does not make any clove bigger than what will be needed to put up a scape ONCE. Once it scapes (bulbils or seeds) that macro clove is exausted, and that central plant dies leaving just the now seperated micros which tend to get dispersed by digging animals, people so on. So you get compartively small plants that taken as individuals, are actually rather ephemeral (the stuff speads like a weed so well becuse there things make so MANY bulbils, seeds and micro bulbs, which only need a year or so to themselves make scapes.
However, occasionally, when one winds up in a spot where the soil is unusually rich, and more to the point, very rarely disturbed, the plant can put down so much energy that even after scaping, the center clove still has enough stored energy to last over another winter and make a second scape the next year. When that happens year after year, if the plant has the right genetics, it can keep getting bigger and bigger until it reaches what, for the species is a freakish size. Normally, if this happens it only happens once, and you get a group of maybe 3-4 cloves that is maybe the size of a large olive all combined (an annuals cloves rarely top the size of a fingernail) I've seen ones like that on sale from time to time (some farmers market people near me collect crow garlic and sell it as "ajo de montanas" (mountain garlic) and pretend it is some sort of rare delicacy (charging rare delicacy prices, of course) However Last year, I did find a head under a bush at the train station that was truly enormous, as big around as a small domestic garlic head, with cloves the same size if not bigger. Pity I couldn't keep it (the pot I re-planted the cloves in turned out to be full of the normal crow garlic, and it sort of starved the big one until I couldn't tell one from the other.) At least I THINK it was crow, there is also field garlic (Allium oleraceum ) aroud here. And that area is planted with flowers each year, so an ornamental allium is also theoretically a possibility (though I know what the bulb stuctures of most of those look like, and this looked more like the wild stuff.)
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Post by mnjrutherford on May 15, 2014 11:38:27 GMT -5
Wow... the details are amazing. I WISH I liked the stuff... there is SO much of it! Working on reducing the amount we have by sowing other, more desirable seed.
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Post by kazedwards on May 18, 2014 23:11:58 GMT -5
Thanks for all the help
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Post by kazedwards on Nov 25, 2015 14:45:05 GMT -5
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Post by steev on Nov 25, 2015 19:25:37 GMT -5
Looks like an onion to me; did you give it the "sniff" test?
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Post by kazedwards on Nov 26, 2015 12:00:00 GMT -5
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Post by robertb on Dec 20, 2015 19:34:45 GMT -5
If these things get too crowded and stunted they can be really hard to identify. I had plants which looked very like those. I grew them out, and eventually they turned into garlic.
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Post by reed on Dec 29, 2015 6:16:44 GMT -5
We have a lot of little wild onion type plants in our neighborhood. It may be the same plant in different growing conditions but sometimes it flowers, sometimes makes small clusters of bubils and sometimes just seems to spread. Less common you see slightly larger plants growing individually. I have never experimented with cultivating it but use the leaves a lot on baked potatoes, in soup or salads. It is very mild, I just think of it as wild, labor free chives. Don't have much of clue what it really is.
[add] I remember a long time ago people who had milk cows didn't like cause it supposedly makes the milk taste like onions. Only one dairy farm I know of left within 100 miles of here so not so much of a problem any more I suppose.
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Post by mnjrutherford on Mar 28, 2016 15:42:00 GMT -5
That looks like a more pleasant variety to me. Not what started the conversation. Did you get rid of those? We still have them everywhere. Still working on getting rid of them by out competing them with other plants.  |
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