Yes I would say it is an Allium - onion. Where in the country was it found as it would help with a full ID. Those would be flower buds and you could revisit to gather seed later.

All Alliums are edible, though all parts are not palatable at all times. IME with A. canadense, any parts that are not tough and stringy at the time should be tasty, if you like onion/garlic flavors. I've used the leaves, bulbils, and inflorescence culinarily. It's the inflorescence that gets tough as it ages.

In addition to using the bulbils, you can also move the existing bulbs in the ground from place to place.

I’m near Galveston Texas. Thank you all. I have never heard of bulbils. They look like tiny bulbs. I will put my snake guardz on and go pull up as many plants (bulbs) as I can and move them to a spot that’s easier to harvest because they are yummy. Thanks again! I love this forum.

If they are growing naturally in the wild I would beg you not to dig up the bulbs. You can remove bulbils from the tops without harming the plants and use them to propagate new specimens..

I have 43 acres, 20 of which are “wild”. My driveway winds through trees so I wouldn’t cut down anymore than necessary. There’s no way I could remove all the onions from the wild but I do intend to pull up as many as I can to relocate close to my home to be used for food. I may regret asking but why does this bother you?

I think her concern was in regard to harvesting plants from land that one does not own. If you own the "wild," they are your plants to cultivate where you want. There is no concern about endangered-ness for this species.

You may want to take a shovel or trowel with you, if you literally meant "pull." You won't be able to pull up the bulbs if the soil is not very soft. Much more likely that all of the foliage will just rip off with the bulb remaining in the ground.

Tiffany's pretty much got it. I was concerned about removing plants from wild areas. Ownership was not uppermost in my mind but it does make some difference. However common a species may appear the words 'pull up as many as I can' worried me. Think of the buffalo.....

Well really, the whole planet is communal property of all life upon it and no one can really "own" it... There is actually NO fair legal basis for that.

But that said, given that all land is now "owned" by someone under our current regime, we must all start stewarding it as if it were still wild and unowned. Because that's basically all that's left now - is owned land. There is very little to no "wild" land left anymore.

Therefore, I would encourage you to try to leave beneficial native plants in place when at all possible...and only attempt to transplant them as a last option. In the case of these wild onions, it is so easy to simply plant their aerial bulbils...that I see no reason to dig up any of the plants themselves.

And lest you say...buh buh buttt...there's so dang many of them! Well, there were also so dang many buffalo and passenger pigeons, too... I mean, the extinction of the overwhelmingly populous, beautiful passenger pigeon through hunting is one of the saddest stories in American history:

One day in rural Monroe County, Indiana during the 1870s, 10-year-old Walter Rader witnessed an astonishing natural phenomenon: passenger pigeons had gathered at his family farm “by the millions.” As the birds descended on the farm, they blocked out “almost the entire visible area of sky.” He remembered that so many pigeons roosted in the trees surrounding the farm at night “that their weight would often break large limbs from the trees.” The crash rang so loudly he could hear it clearly inside his house.

Children in the 1870s became the last generation to witness such unbelievable flights of passenger pigeons. When the Indianapolis Star shared Rader’s memories in 1934, the passenger pigeon had been extinct already for twenty years, though it had reigned as North America’s most abundant bird since the 16th century. Passenger pigeons, once so numerous that they could disrupt natural landscapes, impact the nation’s economy, and shape American social life and cuisine, became a rarity by 1900.

Estimations indicate three to five billion passenger pigeons inhabited North America from the 1500s through the early 1800s, constituting 25-40% of the continent’s total bird population.

Pigeon flocks that blocked the sun and toppled trees supported many Americans’ belief that their nation supplied an endless bounty of natural resources. No matter man’s actions, there would always be an inexhaustible amount of pigeons.

Most European settlers came from nations that had been over-hunted for centuries, so the incredible amounts of game they encountered in America seemed impossible for humans to eradicate. Additionally, Price explains that the freedom to hunt (like shooting a pigeon) became a social, political, and ecological act unique to America. In many European nations, only the upper class who controlled most of the lands where game remained could hunt. She observes “To hunt meant so much more than mere utilitarian gain. To go hunting was to tap into the continent’s bounty, to supplement the table, to exercise your skill with a shotgun, perhaps to band together with neighbors after plowing.”

Contestants shot at targets, namely live passenger pigeons, launched into the air from traps. Sportsmen’s associations across the country hosted events that required thousands of birds for contestants to shoot at.

As trains began to ship thousands of pigeons across the nation daily to supply demand, Révoil predicted that the passenger pigeon was “threatened with destruction . . . if the world endure a century longer, I will wager that the amateur of ornithology will find no pigeons except in select Museums of Natural History” in 1847. The last large flocks of pigeons appeared in the 1870s. Throughout the 1880s, ornithologists and sportsmen reported smaller and smaller flocks, until they began to worry none were left.

Butler concluded in 1912 “The Passenger Pigeon is probably now extinct,” in the wild.

Was it really possible to hunt the continent's most populous bird, numbering in the BILLIONS, to COMPLETE EXTINCTION, in under a century? Why yes...YES IT WAS!!! :(

I don’t have any buffalo.

'I don't have any buffalo..' Precisely. Almost nobody does.

As compelling as they are, and important to know and heed, I don't think the warnings analogizing to buffalo or other extinct entities are relevant to this particular discussion. Earlyfig wants to move some of the onions to cultivate them and increase their numbers for future harvest, not eradicate or abuse them. This is probably much less harmful to the environment than continually driving whatever distance across the property in an internal combustion or rechargeable electric vehicle to harvest them if not moved closer to the house. Moving the onions eliminates that bit of air pollution and continual disturbance to the land by driving over it.

lets get back to allium ..

what is the A that can become a garden thug thru its bulb multiplication and seeding ...

for me.. the question is ... edible or not.. is this something you would want to introduce to a garden bed??? .. or might you want to isolate it to some extent ...

sometime plants out in the wild ... lets say free range instead .... stay rather confined ... but once you introduce them to good garden soil.. and good water .. simply go insane ...

ken

I was thinking of keeping it in a stock tank. I love green onions in dip (7 layer Mexican dip or just cream cheese/sour cream) and on baked potatoes... I was warned the same about growing mint but it’s been contained for a few years in a wooden planter and one day I’m going to use it to make mojitos.

Ken, I think you are thinking about A. canadense, the plant in question. Quite tasty but not as often cultivated for that reason, "weedy," for those concerned about non-grass entities showing up in mowed areas and plants moving around and deciding where they want to be in bed areas.

Well even purely out of self-interest, I think it would be easier and more efficient to simply harvest and plant some of the aerial bulbils near earlyfig200329's house. This requires far less effort than digging up and transplanting the entire plants, while also allowing them to keep colonizing the area they are in now. The end result would be that he would end up with twice (or more or less) as many wild onions on his entire property (and as many as he wants right by his house) with maybe just 1/5 of the effort... It's a win-win-win!

I mean, all those bulbils are already right there just ripe for the picking and planting. It really doesn't get any easier than that! B)

I myself planted some wild onion bulbils recently as well. Easy peasy!

I know. But this thread got really stupid.

Are those bison berries? Buffalo Bill bulbils?

tj

1 buffalo requires 100 acres. I don’t have that much acreage.

After living here for 3 years now I can still say there's no way I could get rid of all these wild onion.

Cue recurrence of whooshing sound.