Volume III (1980) - Flora of New Zealand Adventive Cyperaceous, Petalous & Spathaceous Monocotyledons
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Allium vineale L.

*A. vineale L. Sp. Pl.1, 1753, 299.

Wild Onion

Bulb globose to ovoid, to 3 × 2.5 cm, tunic whitish, membranous, easily separated at base, with several stipitate offset bulbs. Leaves sub-cylindric, hollow, slender, < scape, upper surface ± grooved. Scape erect, slender, 30-90cm high, sheathed for ½-⅓ its length. Umbels < 2 cm diam., with flowers and bulbils ( Var. vineale), or more commonly with bulbils and without flowers ( var. compactum (Thuill.) Bor.); pedicels several times > flowers; spathe-valve 1, soon decidous. Flowers c. 5 mm long, green to white, often purplish, campanulate; segments lanceolate, acute, keeled. Stamens exserted, each inner filament with 2 prominent lateral appendages > anther, outer 3 filaments simple. Capsule not seen.

N. North Auckland; Auckland - Auckland City, Miranda, Thames, near Hamilton; Wellington - Wanganui. S. Otago-Dunedin. Occasional to locally abundant in pastures and waste places.

(Europe, N. America)

First record: Kirk 1870: 143, "As I have not seen flowers the identification must be regarded as doubtful." Listed without query a year later by Kirk (T.N.Z.I.3,1871,160).

First collection: Shortland [Thames goldfield], T. Kirk, undated [probably 1868 or 1869] (); this may be the "Allium sp." from Thames goldfields recorded by Kirk (T.N.Z.I.2, 1870, 100).

FL. 10-11.

A vineale may be recognised by the garlic-like odour, the slender, cylindrical rush-like stems and stipitate offset bulbs, and by the flowers being usually all replaced by bulbils.

Wild onion is occasional and difficult to detect in grassy waste land and on roadsides, and is usually grazed down when growing in adjacent grassland. A. vineale propagates itself by means of the offset bulbs; it also spreads by dispersal of the bulbils in mud on animal hooves, by water and possibly by birds. It gives an unpleasant taint to meat and dairy products from animals which have grazed it.

A. vineale is rated a serious weed in arable fields in Europe, and was probably originally introduced here as bulbs in soil round horticultural plants, and as bulbils as impurities in agricultural seed.

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