Good luck with that. I'd say it's impossible to ID a garlic bulb so forget about trying to ID bulbils.

Having said that, they don't look like German Reds to me. My GR's produce bulbils that are much larger. I don't grow the other two so no idea how big their bulbils are. Plus there's no way of knowing if the unidentified bulbils are limited to only those three varieties of hardneck.

Rodney

This post was edited by theforgottenone1013 on Wed, Oct 1, 14 at 15:56

Actually I'm not trying to ID it, but just to see if it is close to one of the three varieties I mentioned. You already excluded one of them.

Yes, all the varieties may not make a huge difference. There are so many names. Even in China, there may be hundreds of garlic names. The same ones can have different names in Korea.....

Those appear to be actual small cloves as opposed to bulbils. The bulbils, in my experience, don't have colored wrappers, but have white skins and look more like a grain of rice than a garlic clove.

They are not cloves. You can see how small they are. The person who harvested says he collected from the "pod" grown at the top of the plant. He was talking about the scape and the bulbilds.

Photo shows my German White bulbils. Sorry for crappy image quality, was forced to use camera flash.

Agree with others, 100 percent certain it is not German Red.

Might be Music, but personally I have my doubts that it is either Music or German White. All the porcelain varieties I have ever grown produce a higher ratio of white bulbils to red or pink bulbils, but local growing conditions and soil type can affect colors of bulb cloves and bulbils. (Plus I have not grown every porcelain that is available out there.) Storage conditions can also affect bulbil color.

Be aware that German White, Northern White, and German Extra Hardy are often used interchangeably for the same variety. That will add a little more fun into your quest for ID.

Could be a small bulbil purple stripe or a small bulbil rocambole. Just no way of knowing for certain, even just to narrow it down to garlic type, at least without observing the plant or bulb characteristics.

Growing it out would help of course. It is quite easy to distinguish between a porcelain garlic bulb and a rocambole or purple stripe, for example. Observing how or how many times the scape curls would also help narrow down to type.

Check out link below to see more bulbil photos, including Music.

Good Luck!
-Tom

Here is a link that might be useful: Ebay Garlic Seller

Henry Caron of Boundary Garlic has taken great photos of garlic bulbils and there's one of German Red which as Rodney & Tom point out, yours aren'tðÂÂÂthe German red is halfway down the page.

Here is a link that might be useful: Henry Caron's photos

The tiny bulbils size suggests a porcelain. If they grow out in two or three years to decent size procelain bulbs with only 3, 4, or 5 large cloves each that are very hot raw, then a good guess would be Music, BUT you will likely never know the exact variety for sure.

This is exactly what I'd like to know. Music is the most popular garlic planted locally, for its taste and long shelf life as a hardneck.

Somewhat off topic because I can't help ID those bulbils.

For 20 years i've been growing the same strain of Northern White. Some years it's pinker, some years whiter. Twice i've grown Music and i'm convinced it's just another selection of Northern White, just with a nicer name. I mentioned this to the owner of a large Oregon seed company that buys seed garlic from me and he agreed.

That said, good luck with the bulbils.