Cascade Onion

Description

Allium cratericola is a species of wild onion known by the common name Cascade onion. It is endemic to California, where is an uncommon member of the flora in several of the state's mountain ranges, including the northern and southern California Coast Ranges, the western Transverse Ranges, Klamath Mountains, and the Sierra Nevada foothills. Its range covers much of the state, from Riverside County to Siskiyou County. Allium cratericola grows a short stem up to 10 centimetres (4 in) tall from a brown-coated oval-shaped bulb. There are one or two long, pointed leaves up to four times the length of the stem. The umbel contains up to 20 flowers clustered densely together. Each flower is bell-shaped, up to 15 mm (5⁄8 in) across; tepals white, pink or purplish with a dark purple-brown midvein; anthers and pollen are yellow. 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.