crow garlic

Also known as: crow onion; false garlic; stag's garlic; wild onion

A bulbous perennial to 60cm tall, with chive-like, hollow tubular leaves with flowerheads appearing in June and all parts of the plant smell of garlic. Flowerheads are initally covered by a papery sheath and comprise green to purplish bulbils and few pink flowers. Although some forms have a mixture of flowers and bulbils in the flowerhead, the common form has only bulbils, by which it propagates rapidly. Allium vineale is native to much of England, Wales and southern Scotland, growing in waste places and fields. In southern Britain, it may often occur as a severe weed of cultivated places.