May - June 

 Open hills, dry woods 

 along railroad tracks 



WILD GARLIC 



Allium canadense L. 



There is no certain way in which, to disguise 



an onion. Step on it; bruise it; pick it; 



smell it; eat it — it is all the same: onion. 



And wild garlic is the same, only more so. 

 It has been used as a highly flavored morsel to add interest to food since 

 the early prehistoric Indians of Illinois undoubtedly went out and 

 gathered wild onions and wild garlic. 



The name given to all the Onion-Garlic family — Allium — is the 

 name by which the Eomans knew it. They ate garlic, too, from the edge 

 of the Pontine marshes and from the hills above the Tiber. Ever since, 

 the onions have all been known officially asi Allium. Linnaeus, who, two 

 hundred years ago, was giving proper scientific names to all the plants 

 in the world, could not improve on AUium. 



Allium, the wild garlic, still grows \\'il(l alnindantly throughout 

 Illinois. It multiplies rapidly along roads and railroad tracks, as well 

 as in meadows, in woods, and at the edges of fields. The bulbs are hairy, 

 small, not deeply set, and are very pungently a inember of the Onion 

 family. The leaves are thin, tubular, garlic-flavored; so are the erect, 

 wiry stems, topped with a cluster of garlic bulldets, and the buds which 

 open into thin-stemmed, six-petaled, pale pink-lavender flowers. Wild 

 garlic at its best is a pretty thing; at other stages it becomes a ragged 

 and unattractive plant. It nevertheless at any stage aunounces to all 

 that here is a morsel of wild garlic to add to a hiker's sandwich, that here 

 is something brightly flavorful, but strong ... it neede^ a good sandwich 

 to temper its pungency. 



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