Bureaucrat, administrator, widgeteditor
146,870
edits
Changes
→Allium cepa
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, yellowishgreenyellowish-green, 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: