All plants /Ground /Canada Wild Onion
Canada Wild Onion
Allium canadense, amaryllis family. Common in East and Central Texas.
At a glance
- What
- Bulbs, greens, and spring bulblet heads
- How
- Anywhere an onion or chive belongs
- When
- February through May
- Where
- Lawns, meadows, open woods
- Value
- Onion-family flavor and compounds
Caution: THE RULE HAS NO EXCEPTIONS: no onion smell, no eating. Crow poison mimics it leaf for leaf and bulb for bulb but has no odor, and it grows in the same lawns.
Identification
Grassy leaves from a small bulb, and the unmistakable test: crush a leaf and the whole plant must announce itself as onion. Silence means crow poison; leave it.
In the kitchen
The greens are wild chives, the bulbs are shallots in miniature, and the little aerial bulblets pickle into perfect cocktail onions.
Photo: Dominicus Johannes Bergsma, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Forages well with
Forage safely. Never eat a wild plant on this site's word alone. Confirm identity with several sources, learn the look-alikes, and when in doubt, leave it in the ground.