10/07/2026
Plant Family Portrait- the Onions
Meet the alliums, the onion and garlic family.
This flavorful family of plants contains onions, garlic, leeks, shallots, chives, and scallions/green onions.
Often thought of as root crops, these bulbs are actually densely packed leaves, similar in form to a cabbage. Many of these plants are biennials, growing vegetation in their first year, and flowering in their second year. Onions and leeks are effectively batteries, storing this summer's solar power in order to flower next year (unless we eat them).
These plants have a very long history of human use; they are included in humanity's oldest recipes, written in cuneiform. Garlic has been domesticated for so long that it has practically lost the ability to set seeds, instead relying on humans to clone it by dividing and replanting cloves every fall.
These crops get their potent fragrance and flavor from a suite of chemicals that help the plant ward off diseases and all but the most specialized pests. Luckily for us, those same compounds confer a number of health benefits, even if they make us cry sometimes.
Unlike the other crop families we have discussed, the alliums are non-toxic, at least to people. The sulphur compounds that give them their distinctive flavor, however, are toxic to cats, dogs, and some other animals.
There are a number of ornamental alliums, often just called allium (horticulture has a tendency to use a genus and family names for specific plants). These usually feature large spherical pom-pom flower clusters. Walking onions can be grown as a conversation piece; in place of flowers, they create clones called bulbils that droop to the ground, allowing the onion to slowly "walk" across the garden.
That's what I've got for the alliums. We'll see what other crop families I get to before the end of the year.
