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→Allium cepa
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 unknown. At the present time it is no longer found growing wild, but all authors ascribe to it an eastern origin. Perhaps it is indigenous from Palestine to India, whence it has extended to China, Cochin China, Japan, Europe, North and South Africa and America. It is mentioned in the Bible as one of the things for which the Israelites longed in the wilderness and complained about to Moses. Herodotus says, in his time there was an inscription on the Great Pyramid stating the sum expended for onions, radishes and garlic, which had been consumed by the laborers during the progress of its erection, as 1600 talents. A variety was cultivated, so excellent that it received worship as a divinity, to the great amusement of the Romans, if Juvenal is to be trusted. Onions were prohibited to the Egyptian priests, who abstained from most kinds of pulse, but they were not excluded from the altars of the gods. Wilkinson says paintings frequently show a priest holding them in his hand, or covering an altar with a bundle of their leaves and roots. They were introduced at private as well as public festivals and brought 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, Cnidian, Samothracian and Setanison, all named from the places where grown. Dioscorides, 60 A. D., speaks of the onion as long or round, yellow or white. Columella, 42 A. D., speaks of the Marsicam, which the country people call ''unionem'', and this word seems to be the origin of our word, onion, the French ''ognon''. Pliny, 79 A. D., devotes considerable space to ''cepa'', and says the round onion is the best, and that red onions are more highly flavored than the white. Palladius, 210 A. D., gives minute directions for culture. Apicius, 230 A. D., gives a number of recipes for the use of the onion in cookery but its uses by this epicurean writer are rather as a seasoner than as an edible. In the thirteenth century, Albertus Magnus describes the onion but does not include it in his list of garden plants where he speaks of the leek and garlic, by which we would infer, what indeed seems to have been the case with the ancients, that it was in less esteem than these, now minor, vegetables. In the sixteenth century, Amatus Lusitanus says the onion is one of the commonest of vegetables and occurs in red and white varieties, and of various qualities, some sweet, others strong, and yet others intermediate in savor. In 1570, Matthiolus refers to varieties as large and small, long, round and flat, red, bluish, green and white. Laurembergius, 1632, says onions differ in form, some being round, others, oblong; in color, some white, others dark red; in size, some large, others small; in their origin, as German, Danish, Spanish. He says the Roman colonies during the time of Agrippa grew in the gardens of the monasteries a Russian sort which attained sometimes the weight of eight pounds. He calls the Spanish onion oblong, white and large, excelling all other sorts in sweetness and size and says it is grown in 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 the edibles which they found on the march to Tenochtitlan, cites onions, leeks and garlic. De Candollel does not think that these names apply to the species cultivated in Europe. Sloane, in the seventeenth century, had seen the onion only in Jamaica in gardens. The word xonacati ''xonacatl'' is not in Hernandez, and Acosta says expressly that the onions and garlics of Peru came originally from Europe. It is probable that onions were among the garden herbs sown by Columbus at Isabela Island in 1494, although they are not specifically mentioned. Peter Martyr speaks of "onyons" in Mexico and this must refer to a period before 1526, the year of his death, seven years after the discovery of Mexico. It is possible that onions, first introduced by the Spaniards to the West Indies, had already found admittance to Mexico, a rapidity 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 grown at Mobile, Ala., in 1775. In 1779, onions were among the Indian crops destroyed by Gen. Sullivan near Geneva, N. Y. In 1806, McMahon mentions six varieties in his list of American esculents. In 1828, the potato onion, ''A. cepa'', var. ''aggregatum '' G. Don, is mentioned by 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 described as flat, flattened, disc-form, spherical, spherical-flattened, pear-shaped, long. This last form seems to attain an exaggerated length in Japan, where they often equal a foot in length. In 1886, Kizo Tamari, a Japanese commissioner to this country, says, "Our onions do not have large, globular bulbs. They are grown just like celery and have long, white, slender stalks." In addition to the forms mentioned above, are the top onion and the potato onion. The onion is described in many colors, such as white, dull white, silvery white, pearly white, yellowishgreen, coppery-yellow, salmon-yellow, greenish-yellow, bright yellow, 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:
<center>I. Bulb flat at bottom, tapering towards stem. </center>*''Cepa''. Fuchsius, 430. 1542. *''Cepa rotunda''. Bodaeus, 787. 1644. *''Caepe sive Cepa rubra el et alba''. Bauhin, J. 2: 549. 1651. *''Geant de Rocca''. Vilm. 387. 1883. *''Mammoth Pompeii''. American Seedsmen. *''Golden Queen''. American Seedsmen. *''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.
<center>II. Bulb round at bottom, tapering towards stem. </center>*''Zwiblen''. Roeszl. 121. 1550. *''Cepa''. Trag. 737. 1552. *''Caepa''. Cam. Epit. 324. 1586. *''Blanc hatif hâtif de Valence''. Vilm. 378. 1883. *''Neapolitan Marzajola''. American Seedsmen. *''Round White Silverskin''. American Seedsmen. *''White Portugal''. American Seedsmen.
<center>III. Bulb roundish, flattened above and below. </center>*''Cepa''. Matth. 276, 1558; Pin. 215. 1561. *''Caepa capitata''. Matth. 388. 1570. *''Cepe''. Lob. Obs. 73. 1576; Icon. 1:150. 1591. *''Cepa rubra''. Ger. 134. 1597. *''Cepa rotunda''. Dod. 687. i6i61616. *''Rouge gros-plat d'ltalieItalie''. Vilm. 387. 1883. *''Bermuda''. American Seedsmen. *''Large Flat Madeira''. American Seedsmen. *''Wethersfield Large Red''. American Seedsmen.
<center>IV. Bulb rounded below, flattened above. </center>*Cepa. Pictorius 82. 1581. *''Philadelphia Yellow Dutch, or Strasburg''. American Seedsmen.
<center>V. Bulb spherical, or nearly so. </center>*''Cepa''. Trag. 737. 1552. Lauremb. 26. 1632, .*''Cepe''. Lob. Obs. 73. 1576; Icon. 1;:150. 1591. *''Cepe alba''. Ger. 134. 1597. *''Caepa capitata''. Matth. 419. 1598. *''Juane de Danvers'' <font color=#901040>[sic : Jaune de Danvers]</font>. Vilm. 380. 1883. *Danvers. American Seedsmen.
<center>VI . Bulb concave on the bottom. </center>*''Cepa rotunda''. Bodaeus 786. 1644. *''Extra Early Red''. American Seedsmen.
<center>VII. Bulb oblong. </center>*''Caepa''. Cam. Epit. 324. 1586. *''Cepae Hispanica oblonga''. Lob. Icon. 1:150. 1591. *''Cepa oblonga''. Dod. 687. 1616; Bodaeus 787. 1644. *''Piriform''. Vilm. 388. 1883.
<center>VIII. The top onion. </center>In 1587, Dalechamp records with great surprise an onion plant which bore small bulbs in the place of seed.
== ''Allium cernuum'' ==
