Wild onion is edible and is also favored by native-plant gardeners, who enjoy its showy umbels of pink flowers and tolerance of dry, rocky sites. This Ozark species blooms in summer and fall.
Wild onion is a perennial, growing from a bulb, with the odor of onion or garlic.
The flowers are in umbels (the flowers all arising from the tip of the stalk) that are held erect at flowering (not drooping); each flower resembles a 6-pointed star with the petals spreading widely, pink (sometimes white), and showy.
Blooms July–November.
The leaves are basal, narrow, and flat.
Similar species: Missouri has several species of onions, garlic, and wild leeks, all in genus Allium; some are native, and some are introduced. The one most similar is nodding wild onion (Allium cernuum), which is found in the same region and habitats. It is distinguished by its nodding (not erect) flowerheads and, especially, by its bell-shaped (not broadly spreading) flowers. It also tends to flower earlier in the season (June–September).
Height: stalks to 12 inches.
Mainly south of the Missouri River; absent from the Bootheel. Scattered in the Ozark and Ozark border regions, locally north to Lincoln, Boone, and Pettis counties.
Habitat and Conservation
Occurs on glades and exposed bluffs, and in openings of dry upland forests, mostly on calcareous substrates; also on rocky roadsides.
This is the characteristic summer-blooming wild onion in the Ozarks. Its relative, nodding wild onion (Allium cernuum), is also found in the Ozarks, in much the same habitats, but it is less common.
Status
Native Missouri wildflower.
Human Connections
Our wild onions are edible and can be eaten as a vegetable, seasoning, or pickled. To ensure you don't accidentally eat an extremely poisonous relative, make sure all parts of the plant have a strong onion smell. All wild onions and garlics arise from bulbs and have flowers in umbels.
This species can be grown in native wildflower gardens as a pollinator plant and for its showy purple flower clusters.
Ecosystem Connections
Small bees and flower flies visit the showy flowers, but the onion-flavored oils make the leaves unpalatable to most mammals. When cattle eat it as they graze, the milk they produce can take on an oniony flavor.
Wild onion and a group of its relatives used to be considered lilies (family Liliaceae). Botanists, using molecular (DNA) evidence, showed that this subgroup of "lilies" are different enough to be separated into a different family, the Amaryllidaceae, the amaryllis family (pronounced ammer-really-AY-cee-ee). This family also contains onions, garlic, chives, leeks, daffodils, "naked ladies" or "surprise lilies," and the popular "amaryllis" holiday flowers started from bulbs (actually in genus Hippeastrum).
