Allium 2009

[TheOnionMan]

Glad to be aboard.  

Being a "newbie" here, I wasn't sure how info in my profile would display.  It appears that my website url didn't display.  So, I'll add it to my signature below. Lots of Allium pics on my website if you're interested, although I have years more worth of photos and new pages planned that I haven't had time to do anything about it.  If you haven't seen the wild color forms of Allium flavum var. tauricum that emerged in my garden after years of selection, take a look.  To whet your appetite, I upload a few pics.  

Who doesn't love orange alliums?

[TheOnionMan]

And three more views of Allium flavum var. tauricum color forms.  In the first one, is a beige-pink selection in the center, flanked by a typical yellow Allium flavum form, and the white spherical heads are hybrids between Allium albidum x senescens/nutans.  In the upper right is a pale white, brown-tinged form of A. paniculatum.

[Paul T]

And these all started out from original yellow stock in various shades?  Or do some of the other colours appear in nature as well?  Great colour selection, and wonderful displays from each clump.  I've been trying to avoid getting interested in Alliums (interested in too many other things already), but a colour range like that is attractive.  I love the orange and the beige.

[fermi de Sousa]

Hi Mark,
Nice to see you here with your extraordinary range of A. flavum tauricum!
There's also a Thread on Juno Iris which I'm sure you will enjoy and contribute to!
cheers
fermi

[TheOnionMan]

Hello Paul and Fermi,

Well, there's the European Allium flavum which is quite variable in itself, short to tall forms, green to silver leaf forms, and with flower color in varying shades of yellow, light to deep yellow, sometimes greenish yellow.  The Turkish Allium flavum var. tauricum is yellow but variably lightly tinged with other colors, such as pink or brownish.  Also, the stamens on var. tauricum are typically pink or violet, contrasting with the base yellow flowers.

Seed grown plants of Allium flavum var. tauricum from Turkey back in the early 1980s produced yellow slightly pink-tinged flowers.  Jerry Flintoff, fellow Allium enthusiast in Seattle Washington, got a nice light orange-flowered seedling occur with green foliage, and he shared some bulbs with me.  From there, it was just natural selection, year after year collecting seed and sowing it to see what happens.  The seedlings started varying widely in color, lots of pastel shades at first, the colors intensifying in following progeny, but then a strong red-flowered seedling occurred.  Growing on seedlings from the red-flowered seedling and other stronger color deviations eventually resulted in almost any color, from pure white, pale yellow, every pastel color imaginable, beige and tan, brownish things, lots of orange and orangish colors, melon colors, many pink shades, pure pinks, deep rose-pinks, beige-pinks, rose-reds, orange-reds, etc., and with growth forms that tend to be dwarf per Allium flavum var. tauricum (6-10"), but also tending to be highly silvered or glaucous in foliage, although green-leaved types do occur too.

Be sure to go to www.plantbuzz.com and check out the homepage link for the Allium flavum ssp. tauricum mega-galleries, lots of color forms shown there.

Mark McDonough
Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border, USDA Zone 5
antennaria@charter.net
http://www.plantbuzz.com

[Paul T]

Mark,

That is an incredible range of colours for one species.  I grow only a couple of species, but that sounds like one I should be tracking down.  Thanks for showing us.  I'll have a look at your website at some point, but by the sounds of it I don't have time right now. 

I never realised just how many Allium species there were until I checked on the ICON quarantine database for importing seed into Aus..... while there are around 40 or so that are banned, there are nearly 250 on the allowed list (including flavum ssp tauricum).  I knew there were a lot, but given there are probably a miariad of them that don't appear on that list, there are a LOT of different Allium species about. 

[Onion]

Mark,

fantastic side. What a variation in one species  
Hope to see a lot of more fantastic pictures of this lovely genus.

The orange one is incedible. A warm orange 

[TheOnionMan]

Yes, a tremendous amount of range in color and form, quite surprising.  There are also other influencing factors, Allium flavum var. tauricum has hybridized with A. kurtzianum (dwarf pink species from Turkey that has gone around misidentified as A. olympicum).  Hybrids from this cross lead to rather dwarf plants, with more compact less effuse inflorescences, but with similar capacity to come in most any range of colors.

Here are two photos of a seedling that first occured in a friends garden (she had lots of both species that I had given to her).  The hybrid is perfectly intermediate between the two species, flowering on stems 3-4" tall (7.5-10 cm).  These two photos were taken in my garden, July 11, 2009.

In the first photo, the hybrid is in the upper foreground, a good clumping plant with compact heads of a warm and bright salmon pink.  In front of it are a few heads of A. flavum var. tauricum in a lighter pink form.

The second image shows the same scene, but from a different vantage point.

I also upload a third photo of a mixed planting of Allium flavum var. tauricum, plus hybrids.  The "tauricums" typically have lovely effuse heads of bloom, whereas the dwarf but floriferous medium pink one that dominates the lower right of the photo is another of the tauricum x kurtzianum types. Just look at the range of form, inflorescence size, color, etc.

What fun this group is, I feel like an evil scientist working in my mad allium lab at times.

Mark McDonough
Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border, USDA Zone 5
antennaria@charter.net

[Lesley Cox]

I don't usually get excited about onions (except fried, caramelised or as marmalade ) but I think the A. crenulatum is a real beauty, perfect for a trough perhaps?

Can anyone tell me the name of the little pink, fragrant species that was collected by Albury, Cheese and Watson in Turkey in 1966? I had it then just as Allium species and I think it may have had a couple of possible IDs since. Sorry, I no longer have the collection number or a picture at present. It's seedlings are usually, for me, yellow so I assume it hybridises with the nearby A. flavum minor.

And does anyone have a picture they could post here, of A. insubricum? I bought this recently.

[TheOnionMan]

There might be any number of alliums collected by Albury, Cheese, Watson expedition to Turkey in 1966, but the small pink-flowered species that goes around as Allium ACW 2372 (later identified as A. kutzianum, but initially it got around misidentified as A. olympicum).  The following link has some excellent photos by Mike Ireland showing Allium kurtzianum ACW 2372, a terrific allium.  This is the species that I mention in my post above that hybridizes readily with Allium flavum and flavum forms.

http://botgard.bio.uu.nl/Temperate/index.php?gal=Bulbs&genus=Allium&all=

Mark McDonough
Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border, USDA Zone 5
antennaria@charter.net

[Maggi Young]

The following link has some excellent photos by Mike Ireland

 ..... another Forumist, of course!! 

[Lesley Cox]

Oh thank you Mark, that's the one all right. I still have the original patch grown from ACW seed and it is the colour of the first picture, with just the slightest tinge of apricot in the pink, rather than the purer pink of the later pictures. That solves my little mystery of why the seedlings are usually yellow. I've had some pinks but never oranges. I'll know how to label it now. I remember reading in an old AGS bulletin that it was (then) identified as A. olympicum, so definitely the same plant. I'll use kutzianum of course.

[TheOnionMan]

Glad it's the right one. 

I take responsibility and credit over the years for trying to get the misidentification of Allium olympicum fixed.  The true Allium olympicum has flat leaves, not strong fistulose leaves as in A. kurtzianum.  I believe the ACW collection was from Mt. Ida in Turkey, which is the type location for A. kurtzianum.  I have lots more info in my notes someplace, but I feel confident of the ID as Allium kurtzianum.

Mark McDonough
Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border, USDA Zone 5
antennaria@charter.net

[Stephenb]

And does anyone have a picture they could post here, of A. insubricum? I bought this recently.

This is what I have as insubricum. A question from me too - how does A. narcissiflorum differ? I've had seed of the latter several times and the resulting plants always look identical to my insubricum...

 

[TheOnionMan]

The two species, Allium insubricum and narcissiflorum, are nearly identical, the major difference being that while the umbels are pendant or nodding in both species, they remain pendant in A. insubricum, but become erect when going to seed in A. narcissiflorum.  There are other minor differences cited, but the nodding vs. erect characteristic seems the easiest to watch for.

Nice pics Stephen!

Mark McDonough
Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border, USDA Zone 5
antennaria@charter.net