In article ,
Vinson Doyle wrote:
You can tell the garlic from the onions by the flattened leaves. Onions
have rounded, hollow leaves.

Leeks have flat leaves too, as do many other Allium species including
garlic chives. On the other hand, quite a few Allium spp have round
leaves like onions (A.cepa), including some non-bulbing vegetable species,
chives, and others.

Allium is a huge genus, and many spp are used as ornamentals, so there's
no telling what you might find in the wild, growing as an escape. BUt
from the picture, it sure looks like a hardneck garlic. I don't know
of any other common species that does that act with the twisting stalk
with the top developing into a sterile inflorescence of topsets.

Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong here.

On 7/3/07, Carol Paliwoda wrote:

monique wrote in
:

Carol Paliwoda wrote:
Can anyone identify this plant found in an Ohio field (pointed white
bulb on end of long stalk)? Pictures at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpal/

Almost certainly a species of _Allium_, the genus that includes onions
and garlic.

M. Reed


A reply I got in sci.bio.botany quoted:
"It's garlic, Allium sativum, a rocambole or hardneck form. The stalks
will straighten and the structure on top will develop into a bunch of
tiny topsets, sometimes with abortive flowers. When the topsets dry
they will drop off and grow into a single clove the following year,
and a small bulb the year after, also putting up a stalk with topsets.

You can go back later this summer and dig up the small bulbs and eat
them or plant cloves to get more bulbs next year. The topsets can
become a bit of a pest in the garden, but you can eat the young plants
from them in the spring as 'green garlic', just like green onions.

Garlic is an old world plant, not native to Ohio. Most garlic varieties
for cold climates are hardneck forms like this. The 'hard neck' is the
remains of the stalk. Warm climate garlics are usually softneck forms.
They don't put up a stalk."

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