Early Onion

Description

Allium praecox (synonyms: Allium hyalinum) is a species of wild onion known by the common name early onion. It is native to the hills and mountains of southern California and Baja California, where it grows in shady areas in clay soils at elevations up to 800 m. The species has been reported from Kern, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Riverside, Santa Barbara, Orange and San Diego Counties. This includes some populations on the Channel Islands Allium praecox grows from a brownish or grayish bulb between one and two centimeters long. The scape is round in cross-section, up to 60 cm long. A single plant generally has two or three long, keeled leaves about the same length as the scape or sometimes a little longer. The umble consistes up to 40 flowers, each on a long pedicel up to 4 cm long, the flowers up to 15 mm across. The tepals are pink with darker purple veins. Anthers are purple or yellow; pollen 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.