““Garlic. Life stinks with it. Life stinks without it.”—Deborah Morris
The genus allium, or the onion family, consists of hundreds of species, some of which have been cultivated and eaten for thousands of years, others are grown and appreciated for their unusual, spherical blooms.
The edible alliums include onions, garlic, leeks, shallots, chives, scallions, and wild ramps. Allium cepa, the onion, has been grown in China, Egypt, and Persia for at least the last seven thousand years. In ancient Egypt, the onion was revered, as its concentric rings suggested eternal life, and onions were often buried in the tombs with pharaohs. Pliny the Elder wrote about the Romans’ belief that onions could clear up eye ailments; aid in sleep; heal toothaches, dog bites, lumbago, and dysentery. The Greeks fortified their Olympic athletes with a diet of onions.
Although alliums are known as the onion family, the word “allium” is Latin for “garlic.” Garlic’s reputation for stinkiness is suggested in the Greek word for garlic, “aleo,” meaning “to avoid.” The chemical compounds that give garlic its smell depend on the sulfur content of the soil in which it is grown. In New England we plant hard-necked garlic, A. sativa, in the fall. It is one of the last plantings for the growing season in the vegetable bed, and hope and promise go into the soil with each clove. Garlic produces two crops: the flower stems or scapes, which are delicious stir fried; and the bulbs, which are harvested in July when the foliage dies back. The stems form a graceful loop that is worth cutting to admire on a windowsill.
In its raw form, garlic has many healing and medicinal uses. It is an antioxidant, antifungal, and antibacterial, and it boosts the immune system. Garlic is considered a wonder drug, and of course it repels vampires.
Leeks, A. ampeloprasum, are the handsome members of edible alliums. The blue-green strappy leaves have a sharp crease down the middle. Leeks are able to withstand the cold at either end of the growing season, and seedlings are planted out as the vegetable garden is just beginning. After a long season, they can be harvested from under early snows. Our Ashfield poet, Abbot Cutler, in his ode “Leeks,” writes of storing leeks in a trench during the winter: “Now I dig down through old/ frozen crust to damp dark hay/ to the thick grey green leaves/ of the leeks and pull them/ from the piled earth and/ shake dirt from their white/ hairy roots. They come up/ like creatures from under/ the ocean.”
The leek is the national emblem of Wales. Some claim this originated thousands of years ago with the Druids, good pagans who worshiped plants. A leek was believed to cure colds, alleviate the pains of childbirth, and repel evil spirits. Legend tells us that Saint David advised the Britons to wear leeks on their helmets while fighting the Saxons in a field of leeks. Since the 17th century the Welsh have worn leeks on March 1, Saint David’s Day, and leeks are worn at international rugby matches.
Our native, A. tricoccum, grows in moist woodlands across the eastern United States and Canada and has many common names including ramps, spring onions, wild leeks, wood leeks, and ramsons. These mild-tasting greens have a white and pink stem and paddle-shaped leaves, all edible. They are slow growing plants and each flower produces only three seeds. Because they have become widely harvested for the gourmet food market, ramps are now a threatened species in Quebec and they are protected in Maine, Rhode Island, and Tennessee. The indigenous name for ramps, “shikaakwa,” gave the city of Chicago its name.
“According to their species, alliums (as we normally refer to the ornamental onions so as not to get them mixed up in our minds with the good smell of frying) may be had in flower from spring to autumn.”—Christopher Lloyd
I’m not a fan of the tall, giant lollipop alliums. I find A. aflatuense “purple sensation,” with lilac three-inch spheres on thirty-inch stems, a perfect size for complementing irises and peonies in the June garden. Two shorter varieties with spectacular flowers are A. christophii and A. schubertii. A. christophii, known as the Star of Persia, produces five-inch spheres of silvery violet, like floral geodesic domes on two-foot stems. A. schubertii is similar in height and color but with individual florets at varying planes in the sphere, creating little bursts of fireworks. One shortcoming of many ornamental alliums is that the foliage becomes faded and tattered quite early. By planting them among perennials the foliage will be unseen.
Some other early summer bloomers include A. moly which forms clumps of glaucous, pointed leaves with soft yellow rounded stars. A. karafaviense, the Turkistan onion, has low-growing baseball-sized globes nestled in attractive foliage. Blooming later is A. tuberosum, the garlic chive used in Asian cuisine. As an ornamental it is a welcome fresh flower as the summer wanes. Elsa Bakalar wrote: “The flowers are scintillating balls of white, but before that there are the buds, and what buds. I think the beauty of some buds exceeds anything the open flowers have to offer.” And in this case: then there are the seeds, and what seeds. If not deadheaded, garlic chives will sprout everywhere.
Allium, both culinary and ornamental, are not to everyone’s taste. In the sixteenth century Thomas Nash voiced many people’s views on eating allium. “Garlick maketh a man wynke, drynke, and stynke.” Opinions about the use of ornamental alliums in the garden differ greatly. The British gardener William Robinson stated that they were “not of much value in the garden and smelt when crushed.” Vita Sackville-West responded to Robinson: “I think, on the contrary, that some of the alliums have a high value in the June garden…and as for smelling nasty when crushed—well, who in his senses would wish wantonly to crush his own flowers.”
June, 2018
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