Siberian chives

Description

Allium nutans (synonyms: Allium tataricum) English common name Siberian chives or blue chives, is a species of onion native to European Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Asiatic Russia (Altay Krai, Krasnoyarsk, Tuva, Western Siberia, Amur Oblast). It grows in wet meadows and other damp locations. Allium nutans has one or two bulbs up to 1.5 to 20 cm (5⁄8 to 7+7⁄8 in) in diameter. Scapes are winged and 2-angled, 30 to 60 cm (12 to 24 in) tall. Leaves are flat, tapering at both ends, 6 to 10 mm (0.24 to 0.39 in) wide at the widest spot (rarely to 15 mm or 0.59 in), about half as long as the scapes. Umbels are spherical, with many pink to pale purple flowers. 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. Many are used as food plants, though not all members of the genus are equally flavorful. In most cases, both bulb and leaves are edible.