Chives and meadow garlic: two members of the onion family

Chives and meadow garlic together in my herb garden in 2010.

Chives: (Allium schoenoprasum) a classic herb that produces edible leaves, bulbs, and flowers. A perennial plant, chives is widespread in nature across much of Eurasia and North America. It is the only species of Allium native to both the New and the Old Worlds.

Chives are a commonly used herb and vegetable with a variety of culinary uses, but mostly for garnish, because with their hollow stems they fall apart during cooking. They are also used to repel insects, but chives are not native to Florida. 

Meadow Garlic: (Allium canadense) a rarely used perennial herb native to most of eastern North America. It also produces edible leaves, bulbs, and flowers. It's leaves are solid which means that this plant does withstand cooking. As a crop, it has a few characteristics that are a bit different. It dies back for the summer, so leaves are not available for harvesting then, but you could dig the bulbs to use if you know where they are. They sprout again from their bulbs in mid fall, bloom in the spring, and die back after blooming. They produce several bulblets in each flower head, which readily grow where they fall, so this crop spreads rapidly once it's established.

When they are available from late fall through to spring, I use the leaves for both salads and cooking in soups, omelets, stir frys and more. Because the leaves are solid they are more useful in the kitchen than the chives. The taste is similar to, but not the same as chives or garlic chives (Allium tuberosum) and it has a bit of spicyness or heat. All three have an onion overtone, and of the three, chives is the most bland. The meadow garlic flowers also have more flavor than the chives flowers. 

The native range for chives, the only member of this family that's native to both the Western and Wastern Hemispheres, but it's not native to Florida.

The meadow garlic native range, which includes North and Central Florida, but not South Florida.

Onion Family

There has been some controversy over what family the onions should be placed. The Atlas of Florida Plants, my go-to resource on families and nativeness, put them in Alliaceae, basically their own family. Kew Gardens in England and others place them in Amaryllidaceae, the Amaryllus family. USDA and others place them in Liliaceae, the lily family. Plants are classified by their flowers and fruits and if you look at the flowers or in this case the florets of the flower head, they have the characteristic of 3 petals and 3 sepals, which on other plants usually subtend or are below the petals. In this case and in lilies and ammaryllus flowers, the 3 petals and the 3 sepals look the same, so it looks like there are 6 equal petals, but they are called tepals. And the family feud here makes no difference to us in using these plants in our gardens and in our recipes.  

Allium, the genus is divided into the "onions", which have hollow leaves and the "garlics", which have solid leaves. So these two herb fall on opposites sides of the genus. See below for links to other articles for crops in this family. 

Chives and meadow garlic flower heads look different. The chives have purple or lavender florets. The meadow garlic florets are white on a stalk, but the flower head also includes bulblets.

While the flower heads look quite different, the tiny florets are quite similar with their six tepals.

Both of these plants reproduce asexually by the formation of new bulbs under the soil, but the meadow garlic also produces bulblets in each flower head. These bulblets often sprout while still attached to the mother plant. The initial leaf is often twisted, which gives the flower heads a wild-haired look, but having that leaf means that the little bulb has a much better chance of becoming established. 

Two meadow garlic plants, including sprouting
bulblets in the flower heads, the long scapes,
down to the underground bulbs.

   Meadow garlic has been so sucessful that I
give away the scapes each spring at our
local FNPS chapter's plant sale.

My history with these herbs

When I gardened in Maryland I grew chives which lasted for years in the herb garden there. When we moved to Florida in 2004, I established an herb garden outside the kitchen window on the west side of the house. I'd joined FNPS in 2006, so I was more aware of native plants than I had been before. I'd found the meadow garlic growing in a ditch out by the road and moved some to the herb garden. The lead photo of this post shows that herb garden in 2010. The two crops grew side by side there for a few years. But then I moved the herbs from that location after the tropical sage (Salvia coccinea) moved into that space and the butterflies, hummingbirds, and bees we more fun to watch than looking at herbs out our kitchen window where we eat. (I wrote about this transformation in this article:  Listening to your landscape.)

Well, the meadow garlic moved very easily and did well in its new location. The chives did not transplant well and I've attempted to grow it several times since then, but it only lasts for a couple of years before it fades away. I have some growing in a container this year, which is doing a bit better, but our winters are probably not cold enough any more for them to last for multiple season. On the other hand, the meadow garlic has done very well, almost too well. So for the last few years, I gathered the bulblets and donating them to the silent auction at the state-wide conferences before the pandemic. More recently, I've been harvesting all of the scapes and have been giving them away at my local FNPS chapter's spring native plant sales. 

If I don't do this, each one of all those little bublets become new plants and become weeds in my vegetable beds. I let some grow and drop some of those bublets into my native gardens. Since they are so prolific, sharing them is one way to reduce their abundance in our yard and since it is not readily available in the native plant industry, this is one way to promote this Florida native plant. 

Other articles on crops in the onion family:
- Growing onions and garlic in North Florida
- Leeks: Growing and using this garlic relative
- A failed onion crop
- Garlic chives, a bountiful evergreen crop
- Short-day onions & more...

So I hope you will try growing these herbs and others to spice up your meals. 

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt