Wild Onions

by Cindy Watter

The Napa UC Master Gardeners hosted a delightful speaker for a seminar a while back.  Pam Pierce is the author of "Wildly Successful Plants For the Bay Area," as well as a horticulture instructor at City College of San Francisco.   She mentioned wild onions  (Allium triquetrum) as one of those successful plants.  ("Incredibly invasive" could be another term for them.)  She didn't seem alarmed about this vexatious bit of flora, and mentioned that it is pretty and edible.

Over the years, the original crop I had almost eliminated after I bought my house had crept back, and I did a haphazard job of digging them up, every spring.  Last year I let them go, and this spring was rewarded with a lush growth, starred with tiny bell shaped white flowers.  How did it spread so quickly?  Could it have been a side effect of a two-year-old pollinator habitat, which attracted birds that carried seeds around, besides bees and butterflies?  Who knows?  In any case, they compete for space, water, and nutrients with other plants, so they had to go.

A couple of weeks ago, after the rain, the ground was soft enough for me to pull the plants out by the roots.  While this is richly satisfying work, a few onion bulblets are always left behind.  It is better to use a garden spade or fork, and throw out the clod you have exhumed, dirt and all.  My husband was so bored with “Shelter In Place” he did a great job digging them out, with a comfortable garden stool, gloves, and a Japanese weeding knife. They are almost gone. By the way, this is the only recommended way to remove them. Herbicides roll off the waxy leaves of the wild onion and have no effect on them.

As Pam Pierce stated, wild onions are good to eat.  The entire stalk is excellent grilled, and you can chop them into a frittata or omelet.  The greens are quite crunchy, and were tasty in a wild rice salad.  I am told that there are restaurants that will pay for the flowers—they look nice in salads.  I am sure I will always have an adequate supply for my own use.

Informational links:

Calflora https://www.calflora.org/cgi-bin/species_query.cgi?where-calrecnum=238

Peirce, Pam, Wildly Successful Plants, Sasquatch Books, 2004