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Allium vineale - L.

Crow Garlic

Author	L.	Botanical references	17, 200
Family	Alliaceae	Genus	Allium
Synonyms	Allium kochii - Lange.
Known Hazards	There have been cases of poisoning caused by the consumption, in large quantities and by some mammals, of this species. Dogs seem to be particularly susceptible[76].
Range	Much of Europe, including Britain, to N. Africa and Lebanon.
Habitat	Fields and roadsides to elevations of 450 metres in Britain, often a serious weed of pastures[17].
Edibility Rating	3 (1-5)	Medicinal Rating	2 (1-5)

Physical Characteristics

Bulb growing to 0.6m by 0.05m.

The plant prefers light (sandy) and medium (loamy) soils. The plant prefers acid, neutral and basic (alkaline) soils. It cannot grow in the shade. It requires dry or moist soil.

Habitats

Meadow;

Edible Uses

Edible Parts: Flowers; Leaves; Root.

Leaves - raw or cooked[5, 177]. Rather stringy, they are used as a garlic substitute[2, 12, K]. The leaves are available from late autumn until the following summer, when used sparingly they make a nice addition to the salad bowl[8, 183, K]. Bulb - used as a flavouring[105, 161, 177]. Rather small, with a very strong flavour and odour[183]. The bulbs are 10 - 20mm in diameter[200]. Bulbils - raw or cooked. Rather small and fiddly, they have a strong garlic-like flavour[K].

Medicinal Uses

Plants For A Future can not take any responsibility for any adverse effects from the use of plants. Always seek advice from a professional before using a plant medicinally.

Antiasthmatic; Blood purifier; Carminative; Cathartic; Diuretic; Expectorant; Stimulant; Vasodilator.

The whole plant is antiasthmatic, blood purifier, carminative, cathartic, diuretic, expectorant, hypotensive, stimulant and vasodilator[20, 257]. A tincture is used to prevent worms and colic in children, and also as a remedy for croup[257]. The raw root can be eaten to reduce blood pressure and also to ease shortness of breath[257]. Although no other specific mention of medicinal uses has been seen for this species, members of this genus are in general very healthy additions to the diet. They contain sulphur compounds (which give them their onion flavour) and when added to the diet on a regular basis they help reduce blood cholesterol levels, act as a tonic to the digestive system and also tonify the circulatory system[K].

Other Uses

Repellent.

The juice of the plant is used as a moth repellent. The whole plant is said to repel insects and moles[20]. The juice of the plant can be rubbed on exposed parts of the body to repel biting insects, scorpions etc[257].

Cultivation details

Prefers a sunny position in a light well-drained soil[1]. The bulbs should be planted fairly deeply[1]. Grows well with most plants, especially roses, carrots, beet and chamomile, but it inhibits the growth of legumes[18, 20, 54]. This plant is a bad companion for alfalfa, each species negatively affecting the other[201]. This species is a pernicious weed of grassland in Britain[1], spreading freely by means of its bulbils[203]. Members of this genus are rarely if ever troubled by browsing deer[233].

Propagation

Plants do not need any encouragement, they are more than capable of propagating themselves. Bulbils are produced in abundance in the summer and are the main means by which the plant spreads.

Links

This plant is also mentioned in the following PFAF articles: The Edible Lawn.

References

[K] Ken Fern
Notes from observations, tasting etc at Plants For A Future and on field trips.

[1] F. Chittendon. RHS Dictionary of Plants plus Supplement. 1956 Oxford University Press 1951
Comprehensive listing of species and how to grow them. Somewhat outdated, it has been replaces in 1992 by a new dictionary (see [200]).

[2] Hedrick. U. P. Sturtevant's Edible Plants of the World. Dover Publications 1972 ISBN 0-486-20459-6
Lots of entries, quite a lot of information in most entries and references.

[5] Mabey. R. Food for Free. Collins 1974 ISBN 0-00-219060-5
Edible wild plants found in Britain. Fairly comprehensive, very few pictures and rather optimistic on the desirability of some of the plants.

[8] Ceres. Free for All. Thorsons Publishers 1977 ISBN 0-7225-0445-4
Edible wild plants in Britain. Small booklet, nothing special.

[12] Loewenfeld. C. and Back. P. Britain's Wild Larder. David and Charles 0 ISBN 0-7153-7971-2
A handy pocket guide.

[17] Clapham, Tootin and Warburg. Flora of the British Isles. Cambridge University Press 1962
A very comprehensive flora, the standard reference book but it has no pictures.

[18] Philbrick H. and Gregg R. B. Companion Plants. Watkins 1979
Details of beneficial and antagonistic relationships between neighbouring plants.

[20] Riotte. L. Companion Planting for Successful Gardening. Garden Way, Vermont, USA. 1978 ISBN 0-88266-064-0
Fairly good.

[54] Hatfield. A. W. How to Enjoy your Weeds. Frederick Muller Ltd 1977 ISBN 0-584-10141-4
Interesting reading.

[76] Cooper. M. and Johnson. A. Poisonous Plants in Britain and their Effects on Animals and Man. HMSO 1984 ISBN 0112425291
Concentrates mainly on the effects of poisonous plants to livestock.

[105] Tanaka. T. Tanaka's Cyclopaedia of Edible Plants of the World. Keigaku Publishing 1976
The most comprehensive guide to edible plants I've come across. Only the briefest entry for each species, though, and some of the entries are more than a little dubious. Not for the casual reader.

[161] Yanovsky. E. Food Plants of the N. American Indians. Publication no. 237. U.S. Depf of Agriculture. 0
A comprehensive but very terse guide. Not for the casual reader.

[177] Kunkel. G. Plants for Human Consumption. Koeltz Scientific Books 1984 ISBN 3874292169
An excellent book for the dedicated. A comprehensive listing of latin names with a brief list of edible parts.

[183] Facciola. S. Cornucopia - A Source Book of Edible Plants. Kampong Publications 1990 ISBN 0-9628087-0-9
Excellent. Contains a very wide range of conventional and unconventional food plants (including tropical) and where they can be obtained (mainly N. American nurseries but also research institutes and a lot of other nurseries from around the world.

[200] Huxley. A. The New RHS Dictionary of Gardening. 1992. MacMillan Press 1992 ISBN 0-333-47494-5
Excellent and very comprehensive, though it contains a number of silly mistakes. Readable yet also very detailed.

[201] Allardice.P. A - Z of Companion Planting. Cassell Publishers Ltd. 1993 ISBN 0-304-34324-2
A well produced and very readable book.

[203] Davies. D. Alliums. The Ornamental Onions. Batsford 1992 ISBN 0-7134-7030-5
Covers about 200 species of Alliums. A very short section on their uses, good details of their cultivation needs.

[233] Thomas. G. S. Perennial Garden Plants J. M. Dent & Sons, London. 1990 ISBN 0 460 86048 8
A concise guide to a wide range of perennials. Lots of cultivation guides, very little on plant uses.

[257] Moerman. D. Native American Ethnobotany Timber Press. Oregon. 1998 ISBN 0-88192-453-9
Very comprehensive but terse guide to the native uses of plants. Excellent bibliography, fully referenced to each plant, giving a pathway to further information. Not for the casual reader.

Readers Comments

Plants for a Future does not verify the accuracy of reader comments, use at your own risk. In particular Plants For A Future can not take any responsibility for any adverse effects from the use of plants. You should always consult a professional before using plants medicinally.

Allium vineale

Michael J. Orlove D.I.C., D. Phil Sun, 25 Jul 1999

Universe! Dear Rich, 24-July-1999

I discovered your page with the following URL:

http://www.scs.leeds.ac.uk/pfaf/onions.html

In it you made reference to Allium ursinum, as "wild garlic". I always thought A. ursinum was a rare species in North American woods, and that in Britain and North America the term was usually applied to A vineale. It is also applied to A. canadesne as you know, and also feral populations of A. sativum whose origin in the New world is considered mysterious, Native Americans and early White settlers have both been suspected of introducing it, or possibly it spread on its own without human agency (which I doubt). A. vineale is a tubular leaved species but it is much more closely related to A. ampeloprasum, A. sativum, A., scorodoprasum, A. shaeonoprasum, and A. rosem than to A. cepa, or A. fistulosum. It is the one that is a pest in wheatfields because of the similarity of its bulbils in shape and density to wheat kernels, making mechanical separation very difficult.

what has fascinated me so much about A. vineale is its extreme variation in umbel contents even within a local population. some plants have flowers some bulbils, and some both. When bulbils are few or absent in the umbel, the blossoms are VERY showy --being companulate instead of ovatge.

At such times they are purple instead of green. The very showy form is known as A. V. capsuliferum in reference to its seed capsules. the half and half (bulbils and blossoms) form is called A. V. typicum, and the all bulbil one is A. v. compactgum. Two dark pigmented bulbilforms are also described, one reproduces like compactum, and is called A. v. fuscescens, and the other appears to have viviparous bulbils, but the "sprouts" are actually non-vestigal blades on scale leaves on the bulbils, and is known as A. v. crinitum. crinitum usually has one or 2 ovate flowers per umbel which are lavender or purple in color. All sorts of intermediates exist between these forms. Here in Ithaca fuscescens-like ones have flowers, and crinitum like ones don't or crinitum like ones will have many flowers and viable flowers with many capsuls forming.

I once found a clump of capsuliferum surrounded by a vast field of hundreds and thousands of typicum. Those typicum near the capliferum had purple flowers like the capsuliferum, but the ones farther out had the green flowers typical of typicum. The blossoms of this species are usually visited by tiny ants, sweat bees, or nothing at all, but the capsuliferum where being actively and aggressively visited by large bumblebees (Bombus pennsylvanicus --a large pocket maker, related to the British species B agrorum, but as big as B. terristris). Large paper wasps (Polistes fuscatus) were equally present and interested in the nectar.

An article by Hugo Iltis in the 1940's (it was either in Scientific Monthly or Atlantic Monthly) claimed that this showy capsuliferum form made it as far north a as North Carolina, and . v. typicum was as good as you could get in the Northeast.

Nevertheless this wonderful clump of capsuliferum I found was in the Bronx! that was in 1979, and it continued to persist there until 1983. could this have been global warming? the real question was this capsuliferum more related to the non - sexual nonspecific neighbors around it, or capsuliferum in N. Ccarolina? did it evolve denovo from non-sexual or less sexual forms?

Many biologists say it is a mystery how sex evolved to begin with (the origin - of- sex question" and it is equally a mystery how sex stays in the population and doesn't get selected against (the maintenance - of -sex question). John Maynard Smith (at the University of Susex), Goeffrey Parker (University of Liverpool), and George Williams (University of the State of New York at Stonybrook) have become famous elucidating and trying to solve this mystery. It seems that mating with a stranger may further the fitness of your offspring, but it appears not enough to justify throwing half-of your genes away, as a female does when mating. Plants with both cleistogamous and chasmogamous flowers, like Violo sp., Impatiens capensis (Orange balsam), and I. noli-tangeri (touch-me-not), and the very similar North American I. palida, not to mention the hog peanut, Amphicarpaea xxx, present a similar example of this mystery.

What are your thoughts on this issue? How far north does A. v. capsuliferum make it in Britain? I have found capsuliferum in Interlaken, N. Y. Near Ithaca, N. Y. where Cornell University is, but these ones were not as tall or showy as the ones from the much warmer Bronx. but they were capsuliferum, and made good seed. I have 2 accessions of them, one from a bulbil, and the other from a seed collected from the same umbel in Interlaken.

I have been unable to get them to blossom or even bolt with bulbils in my garden, just getting non scapigqarous growth every spring.

There is some folklore in this country that A. vineale takes on its capsuliferum form when in the vacinity of an underground stream, and dowsers exploit the information provided by the occurrence of the plant in particular instances.

Well I must go now, Please forgive my sloppy typing, I am disabled and it takes me eons to proofread things. Incidentally, are you in Cornwall, or Yorkshire?

Some day I will, if I only live, compare the DNA of different forms of A. V. vineale from different locations. the Bronx material seems to be now absent from the original site, I have been back 3 times over the years, and the material I collected now exists as seed in cold storage, but I lack access to it over a technicality (it was shipped to another storage facility instead to Harvard where I was going to grow it out, due to an accident, and it would take a very large sum to recover it, as well as the permission of the person who became its accidental owner who is not willing to release it to me. this is very frustrating.

sincerely yours,

Michael J. Orlove D.I.C., D. Phil

Allium tricoccum

John H. McKinney Tue Apr 17 12:56:13 2001

Recently I discovered the data base PFAF. I have been trying to find a data base on plants for some time without success. Although I am trying to learn all I can on Alliums I am at the present time concentrating on Allium tricoccum and its varieties.

Your data base lists the species as a hermaphrodite plant. This would indicate that the plant can only be Propagated by seed only. I know that this plant can be propagated by bulbs or cloves as well. Each matured plant will produce at least 3 cloves or bulbs. I also have been told that propagation can also be accomplished by just planting the roots. (This I have yet to try.)

Since there are at least two recognized species of Allium tricoccum and the plant can be propagated by seeds, it is possible to have several varieties. This is based on the fact that since the plant can be propagated by bulbs, this method would product the true species. Propagation by seed could and would produce varieties. Nothing can be found to verify this. Since this plant can be propagated by bulbs, would this change or make a difference in the superdivision?

Also you data base shows a photo of Allium kochii but a write up is missing. Did find where I believe this species is a var of Allium vineale. This is also a puzzlement as most books only indicate that the crow garlic is only Allium vineale. The data base also shows a photo of Allium navadense but no write up. Is there a complete listing and description of the Allium species. If so where would one find it?

As a whole I have found the data base very informative and believe it will be a useful tool.

Any additional information that you can supply me on the Allium species would be deeply appreciated.

Allium vineale

peter c horn Sun Jan 22 2006

re: first paragraph of Dr Orlove's comments. Allium ursinum is a native plant in England, with common names of 'Wild garlic' and 'Ramsons.' Allium vineale, the troublesome weed of cultivated land, is called 'Wild Onion' or 'Crow garlic.'

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