In keeping with the spirit of Philip's "Tuesday Tetrapod" and Rachael's, umm...Habitual Hexapod?, I have decided to try to post one Angiosperm (Magnoliophyte) entry each Monday, in an effort to keep this blog frequently updated. For information on Angiosperms (flowering plants), please see my horticulture page. And just a reminder of the taxonomic conventions for most plants: orders generally end in -ales, while families end with -aceae.

Today's entry is near and dear to my heart, the green onion Allium fistulosum.

Liliopsida (monocots); Asparagales; Alliaceae; Allium fistulosum

Sometimes called scallions, bunching onions, or spring onions, these members of the onion family are often used in cooking when a milder onion flavor is required than the traditional A. cepa. The agricultural variety is a domesticated form of the Welsh onion, though these plants did not originate in Wales (the old German "welsche" meaning "foreign"); rather, they most likely originated in Siberia or China. They are not to be confused with shallots (A. oschaninii), a small-bulbed species indigenous to Central/Southwest Asia, though they often are. Green onions have been cultivated for nearly as long as A. cepa (6,000 years), both as a food and as a medicinal agent.