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== ''Allium akaka '' Gmel. ==Liliaceae.
Persia. This plant appears in the bazar in Teheren as a vegetable under
the name of wolag. It also grows in the Alps. The whole of the young
plant is considered a delicacy and is used as an addition to rice in a
pilau.
Europe and the Orient. This is a hardy perennial, remarkable for the
size of the bulbs. The leaves and stems somewhat resemble those of the
leek. The peasants in certain parts of Southern Europe eat it raw and
this is its only known use.
Siberia. Called on the upper Yenisei mischei-tschesnok, mouse garlic,
and from early times collected and salted for winter use.
Cultivated everywhere. The Askolonion krommoon of Theophrastus and
the Cepa ascolonia of Pliny, are supposed to be our shallot but this
condiment." Shallots are enumerated for American gardens in 1806.
Vilmorin mentions one variety with seven sub-varieties.
The bulbs are compound, separating into what are called cloves, like
those of garlic, and are of milder flavor than other cultivated alliums.
make an excellent pickle. In China, the shallot is grown but is not
valued as highly as is A. uliginosum.
North America. There is some hesitation in referring the tree onion of the
garden to this wild onion. Loudon refers to it as "the tree, or bulbbearing,
origination in Canada is in its favor, as is also the appearance of the
growing plants.
Persia and Beluchistan. The onion has been known and cultivated as
an article of food from the earliest period of history. Its native country is
to table. The onions of Egypt were mild and of an excellent flavor and
were eaten raw as well as cooked by persons of all classes.
Hippocrates says that onions were commonly eaten 430 B. C.
Theophrastus, 322 B. C., names a number of varieties, the Sardian,
large abundance in Holland. At Rome, the sort which brings the highest
price in the markets is the Caieta; at Amsterdam, the St. Omer.
There is a tradition in the East, as Glasspoole writes, that when Satan
stepped out of the Garden of Eden after the fall of man, onions sprang
up from the spot where he placed his right foot and garlic from that
where his left foot touched.
Targioni-Tozzetti thinks the onion will probably prove identical with A.
fistulosum Linn., a species having a rather extended range in the
mountains of South Russia and whose southwestern limits are as yet
unascertained.
The onion has been an inmate of British gardens, says McIntosh, as
long as they deserve the appellation. Chaucer," about 1340, mentions
them: "Wel loved he garleek, onyons and ek leekes."
Humboldt says that the primitive Americans were acquainted with the
onion and that it was called in Mexican xonacatl. Cortez, in speaking of
adaptation scarcely impossible to that civilized Aztec race, yet
apparently improbable at first thought.
Onions are mentioned by Wm. Wood, 1629-33, as cultivated in
Massachusetts; in 1648, they were cultivated in Virginia; and were
Thorburn as a "vegetable of late introduction into our country." Burr
describes fourteen varieties.
Vilmorin describes sixty varieties, and there are a number of varieties
grown in France which are not noted by him. In form, these may be
pale salmon, salmon-pink, coppery-pink, chamois, red, bright red,
blood-red, dark red, purplish.
But few of our modem forms are noticed in the early botanies. The
following synonymy includes all that are noted, but in establishing it, it
must be noted that many of the figures upon which it is founded are
quite distinct:
I.
Bulb flat at bottom, tapering towards stem.
Paris Silverskin. American Seedsmen.
Silver White Etna. American Seedsmen.
The difference at first sight between the crude figure of Fuchsius and
the modern varieties is great, but ordinary experience indicates that the
changes are no greater than can be observed under selection.
II.
Bulb round at bottom, tapering towards stem.
Round White Silverskin. American Seedsmen.
White Portugal. American Seedsmen.
III.
Bulb roundish, flattened above and below.
Large Flat Madeira. American Seedsmen.
Wethersfield Large Red. American Seedsmen.
IV.
Bulb rounded below, flattened above.
Cepa. Pictorius 82. 1581.
Philadelphia Yellow Dutch, or Strasburg. American Seedsmen.
V.
Bulb spherical, or nearly so.
Juane de Danvers. Vilm. 380. 1883.
Danvers. American Seedsmen.
VI
Bulb concave on the bottom.
Cepa rotunda. Bodaeus 786. 1644.
Extra Early Red. American Seedsmen.
VII.
Bulb oblong.
Cepa oblonga. Dod. 687. 1616; Bodaeus 787. 1644.
Piriform. Vilm. 388. 1883.
VIII.
The top onion.
In 1587, Dalechamp records with great surprise an onion plant which
bore small bulbs in the place of seed.
Western New York to Wisconsin and southward. This and A.
canadense formed almost the entire source of food for Marquette and
his party on their journey from Green Bay to the present site of Chicago
in the fall of 1674.
ONION.
Siberia, introduced into England in 1629. The Welsh onion acquired its
name from the German walsch (foreign). It never forms a bulb like the
Randolph in Virginia before 1818; and was cataloged for sale by
Thorburn in 1828, as at the present time.
Europe and the Orient. According to Heldreich, it yields roots which are
edible.
Siberia. From early times the plant has been cultivated on the Tobol as
a substitute for garlic.
Siberia. This onion is eaten as a vegetable in Japan.
Europe. The young leaves are used in Sweden to flavor stews and
soups or fried with other herbs and are sometimes so employed in
Britain but are inferior to those of the cultivated garlic.
Found growing wild in Algiers but the Bon Jardinier says it is a native
of Switzerland. It has been cultivated from the earliest times. This
St. David to distinguish them in the battle. It is referred to by Tusser
and Gerarde as if in common use in their day.
The leek may vary considerably by culture and often attain a large size;
one with the blanched portion a foot long and nine inches in
Buist names six varieties. The blanched stems are much used in French
cookery.
North America. This is a wild onion whose root is eaten by the Indians.
Mediterranean countries. According to Heldreich, this plant yields
edible roots.
Europe and Asia Minor. The leaves are eaten by the Greeks of Crimea.
Europe, Siberia and the Orient. The bulbs are eaten by the hill people of
India and the leaves are dried and preserved as a condiment.
Europe. This plant, well known to the ancients, appears to be native to
the plains of western Tartary and at a very early period was transported
fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Loureiro
found it under cultivation in Cochin China.
The first mention of garlic in America is by Peter Martyr, who states that
Cortez fed on it in Mexico. In Peru, Acosta says "the Indians esteem
agreeable to them. In seed catalogs, the sets are listed while seed is
rarely offered. There are two varieties, the common and the pink.
North temperate zone. This perennial plant seems to be grown in but
few American gardens, although McMahon, 1806, included it in his list
in 1726; and it is recorded as formerly in great request but now of little
regard, by Bryant in 1783.
The only indication of variety is found in Noisette, who enumerates the
civette, the cive d'Angleterre and the cive de Portugal but says these
propagated by the bulbs; for, although it produces flowers, these are
invariably sterile according to Vilmorin.
GARLIC.
Europe, Caucasus region and Syria. This species grows wild in the
Grecian Islands and probably elsewhere in the Mediterranean regions.
esculents by McMahon, 1806, by Gardiner and Hepburn, 1818, and by
Bridgeman, 1832.
Europe and Siberia. This species is eaten as a vegetable in Japan.
Europe and Siberia. From early times this species has been eaten by
the people about Lake Baikal.
North America. "Bulb oblong-ovate and eatable."
HOG'S GARLIC. RAMSONS.
Europe and northern Asia. Gerarde, 1597, says the leaves were eaten in
Holland. They were also valued formerly as a pot-herb in England,
Kamchatka this plant is much prized. The Russians as well as the
natives gather it for winter food.
Europe and now naturalized in northern America near the coast. In
England, the leaves are used as are those of garlic.
[[Category:Sturtevant (1919)]]
