Friday, May 8, 2009

Giant Onion

Giant onion, or Allium giganteum, in the New York Botanical Garden:


If you're a regular reader, you don't need to be told that the large purple globe is actually a sum of many smaller flowers, all of which radiate from the same spot on the top of the stem.

Giant onion, as you can guess, is a bulb and it doesn't look much different from the onion bulbs you'd buy at a grocery store.

I can't get enough of this funky perennial en masse, along this path. It provides such a great contrast to the verdant, spring green of the lawn.

Here it is again, playfully popping out of a boxwood parterre:


Just. love. it. So fun.

Allium is the Latin name for garlic, and indeed, giant onion shares its genus with regular garlic, which is Allium sativum.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow, where did you find them? We have had such horrid weather lately. What a find. Thank you!

Emily said...

ooo, I'd always wondered what those were. Can you eat them?