e 
ALLIUM. 
Flowers white to purple, never yellow, capsule from depressed- 
globose to obovate, often deeply lobed and with aspongy appendage 
on or near the top of each cell, called a crest; base of the style 
enclosed between the lobes of the ovary and jointed to its top, cells 
1-2 ovuled at the base; filaments usually flat and dilated at the 
base; bracts, also called valves, 1-5, generally more or less united 
when young; leaves 1-several, fleshy, rarely leathery; scape from 
a several- to many-coated bulb, which, ina very few cases only, 
arises from the end of a rootstock, taste and smel] that of strong 
onions; in all our species the leaves are sheathed at the base, the 
sheaths rising about to the surface of the ground, rarely above it, 
the bracts are never elongated beyond the flowers and the fila- 
ments are without teeth or points at the apex, the bases being 
united into a ring under the ovary, in our species. Yhe follow- 
ing arrangement of species is based on what the author regards 
to be the genetic relationship, beginning with the lowest forms 
and ending with the highest. In a critical study of the onions, 
it is found that all but the very thinnest coats of the bulb are 
double and rarely triple, the main central coat having a very 
thin outer covering, which always, except perhaps in A. attenui- 
folium and possibly its allies and A. acuminatum, possesses 
rectangular markings arranged in vertical rows, the innermost 
portion of the coat, when present, generally has the same rect- 
angular markings as the external portion of the main coat and is 
like it in texture; the main coat generally has peculiar markings 
which are characteristic of the species and of critical value in 
classification; all coats have several to many vertical ribs which 
branch only in the last section of the genus and mark the most 
highly developed species; coats often seabrous: cceasionally. how- 
