Allium brevistylum / short-styled onion

Adjectives: clonal, edible, fragrant, native, riparian, wet meadows

See also: Allium geyeri / Geyer’s onion

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Short-styled onion is a perennial herb with an onion/garlic-like “aroma” (go figure). It grows in swampy meadows and along streams, rarely on wooded slopes. It has a  thick, iris-like underground rhizome with bulbs at the ends. The bulbs, from which the above-ground plant grows, are an inch or so in diameter. These may separate from the rhizomes leading to formation of a cluster of plants. Should you dig one up, the bulbs are dirty white, often wrapped in old gray, parallel fibers.

The flowers are held at the top of leafless stems arising from the base amongst the clump of leaves (scapes). These may be up to two feet tall. Clusters of 7 to 15 urn-shaped flowers are held on flat-topped, umbel-like clusters with their individual stalks about as long as the flowers themselves at flowing time. The stalks get longer after that. (One source calls this arrangement a “scapigerous cyme umbel” in case you want to impress someone, maybe just your dog.)

Each flower has 6 pointy, pink tepals about ½ inch long with thick midribs. The styles and yellow-tipped stamens are much shorter than the tepals making them hard to see. In the Valley, expect flowering mostly in early July.

Short-styled onion leaves grow from the soil line, with 2 to maybe 7 on a plant. They are blunt-tipped and smooth edged, up to ¼ inches across. They are much shorter than the scape, still green at flowering time and when seeds are ripe.