The Doppelganger In My Garden!

  It is not a lie when I tell you that I grow a lot of Allium related plants in my garden.  The chives have just about taken over, the garlic is doing extremely well, shallots are being quite happy and onions are constantly being replaced as I use them.  I have lots and lots of alliums!  Why?  First, I use a lot.  While Mark and Son are not big on any of the above, I could eat them at every meal and be perfectly blissful.  Second, they are just so easy to grow!  Plop them in the ground and forget about them for a while and then you have a fine crop.  Almost all of the alliums in my gardens are from salvaged root ends from store-bought ones.  I just save the last half inch near the root end and stick it in a bit of water for a day then plant.  Ta da!!!  Onions, shallots, garlic, chives...oh, my!  The original plants are still going strong and multiplying like crazy so no more store bought alliums!

The onion impostor!

  Then, there is one cluster of bulbs that mimics the onions.  Well, it looks a lot like wild onions when you first look at the plant.  It grows from a bulb, has leaves like an onion and makes white blooms like some onions.  Other than the blooms being slightly different, the biggest identifying factor is that these plants do not have the strong smell that true alliums have.  So, big tip here!  If it looks like an onion and smells like an onion...it is an onion.  If that smell is lacking, don't eat it!  The plant is an impostor!  It may be a pretty impostor but it is still an impostor!  I have never eaten one so cannot attest to this fact but the plant is said to be poisonous!  Do not eat!  Why take the chance when you can just take a sniff to tell the difference? 

  The false onion, false garlic or (what Pop called it) crow's poison does indeed have a place in my garden but not where it has so inconveniently decided to grow.  I would hate for some unsuspecting visitor to pull the plant thinking they are going to cook up some fantastic dish then discover too late that what they just stir-fried was not a cluster of onions at all.  So, the plant will be dug and moved to the flower garden to add a bit of early springtime beauty.  

Is it? Or is it not?

  Someone asked me the other day if wild onions are edible.  You know, those things that pop up in the lawn and make the place smell wonderful (if you are like me and love onions) when you hit them with the lawnmower or those things that seem to be the bane of every homeowner (except me!) who wishes to have the perfect lawn or those things that, as kids, we all dared our siblings to taste.  Those are all one and the same...wild onions.  Now to answer the question.  Yes.  Wild onions are edible although you may not want to overdo with them.  In a pinch, the lovely little green plants can be added as a flavoring but there is some question as to using them in mass quantities.  I guess that goes back to the "extensive tests have not been done" disclaimer that is tagged on most things. It seems that the wild onions are toxic to dogs so, therefore, contain a mild form of toxicity.  Humans seem to not have problems with it, though.  Now comes the kicker....

  Not all things that look like wild onions are wild onions.  There are things that we always called "crow's poison" that looks remarkably similar to wild onions.  They are green, have small white bulbs and blooms that might be mistaken for the onion bloom.  These are said to be extremely toxic by some folks..  While I cannot attest to this as fact (since I have not eaten one), my advice is "Do not eat them."  Grandmother had a saying "When in doubt, throw it out."  Maybe that does not apply here but the thought is the same...sort of...just don't eat something that causes you doubt. It is, however, easy to distinguish the two.  Wild onions smell like...well, onions.  Crow's poison does not.  It smells like...nothing.  If there is an odor, it is mild and grass like.

Wild onions definitely smell like onions.

Crow's Poison does not have the onion/garlic smell of wild onions.

   My question?  Since it is so easy to grow onions of any sort, why would you need to forage for wild ones.  Onions and chives are some of those things that can be grown from the small root end of the stuff you buy in the store and once you get a start, you never need to replant.  They just grow...continuously.

  Now a tidbit about the curious name of crow's poison.  Plants sometimes have weird names but this one takes the cake.  Crow's poison, from what I was told as a kid by Granddad, was labeled such years and years ago.  Maybe this is just a local thing as another name for the plant is false garlic. Understandable...but crow's poison is a different story altogether.  It seems that once folks found that the plant was toxic to most animals, they decided to make use of it.  Being a resourceful folk during a time when the corner Walmart was not there, farmers smashed the plant to get the inner sap.  That juice was plastered all over their young chicks in an attempt to keep crows from nabbing them for supper. The thought was that if a crow stole a chick, it would eat the toxic gunk along with the chick resulting in a dead crow.  The smashed bulbs were also mixed with grain and left in fields in hopes that a whole murder of crows would die.  The murder was murdered, in that case.  Which is a tad ridiculous as no one calls a flock of crows a murder of crows and not many folks think of killing birds as murder.  (I do...on both accounts.)  So there you have it.  A weird name for a plant, an edible plant that everyone hates,  a toxic plant that may or may not be toxic, a story passed down through the generations that may be just a great tale that contains not a bit of truth.  Lots of fun stuff!