Keeled Garlic

Description

Allium carinatum, the keeled garlic or witch's garlic, is a bulbous perennial flowering plant in the family Amaryllidaceae. It is widespread across central and southern Europe, with some populations in Asiatic Turkey. It is cultivated in many places as an ornamental and also for its potently aromatic bulbs used as a food flavoring. Allium carinatum produces a single small bulb rarely more than 15 mm long, flat leaves, and an umbel up to 60 cm tall of purple to reddish-purple flowers. The flowers are on long pedicels and often nodding (hanging downwards). Allium carinatum is considered native to the Mediterranean Region from Spain to Turkey, north to Sweden and the Baltic Republics. It is naturalized in the British Isles. A. carinatum subsp. pulchellum and the white flowering form A. carinatum subsp. pulchellum f. album have both gained the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit. Allium is a genus of monocotyledonous flowering plants that includes hundreds of species, including the cultivated onion, garlic, scallion, shallot, leek, and chives. The generic name Allium is the Latin word for garlic, and the type species for the genus is Allium sativum which means "cultivated garlic". Carl Linnaeus first described the genus Allium in 1753. Some sources refer to Greek ἀλέω (aleo, to avoid) by reason of the smell of garlic. Various Allium have been cultivated from the earliest times, and about a dozen species are economically important as crops, or garden vegetables, and an increasing number of species are important as ornamental plants. The decision to include a species in the genus Allium is taxonomically difficult, and species boundaries are unclear. Estimates of the number of species are as low as 260, and as high as 979. Allium species occur in temperate climates of the Northern Hemisphere, except for a few species occurring in Chile (such as A. juncifolium), Brazil (A. sellovianum), and tropical Africa (A. spathaceum). They vary in height between 5 cm and 150 cm. The flowers form an umbel at the top of a leafless stalk. The bulbs vary in size between species, from small (around 2-3 mm in diameter) to rather large (8-10 cm). Some species (such as Welsh onion A. fistulosum and leeks (A. ampeloprasum)) develop thickened leaf-bases rather than forming bulbs as such. Plants of the genus Allium produce chemical compounds, mostly derived from cysteine sulfoxides, that give them a characteristic onion or garlic taste and odor.