Jepson's onion

Description

Allium jepsonii is a species of wild onion known by the common name Jepson's onion, honoring renowned California botanist Willis Linn Jepson. Allium jepsonii is endemic to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada foothills of California, in Tuolumne, Placer, El Dorado, and Butte Counties. It is found at elevations of 300–600 metres (980–1,970 ft). Allium jepsonii, the Jepson's onion, grows to a height between about 20 and 40 centimeters from one or two oval-shaped bulbs. There is a single cylindrical leaf which is about the same length as the stem. The inflorescence holds 20 to 60 small flowers, each under a centimeter long with pink-veined white tepals with curling tips. 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.