Could they be walking onions? These are edible as bulbs or greens. Right now, mine are starting to form the light green pods that pop open soon on thick stiff stalks. These will eventially turn into small bulb clusters, topple over and then plant themselves nearby the ones in the soil. The ones in soil will also double, triple, or more. They aren't really wild, but are very aggressive in their culture. Once you dig up the bulbs, they usually will not return unless some tops fall where they used to be.

you might even have chives. my gram battled the thin chives in her yard all her life, even digging, they never went away. they were definitely chives and not onions, although they didn't form the purple flwers. they did form the bulblets on top like wild onions.

i have eaten both! wild onions greens are very good in salads, and chives with potatoes.

All Alliums are edible as far as I know. The wild one are strong ... pungent hardly covers it! ... I'm sure they had a strong smell when you went to pullin' em up.
I have several different types of Allium that I grow both for the flowers and for bulbs to be consummed. I have many growing in a ring around my fruit trees to help ward off the boring (as in tunneling not uninteresting ;o)insects.
I assume you are talking about the small little finger sized bulbs here.
Ha! Take a bite of a bulb and see how bad she bites back ;o) I do warn ya you will learn the meaning of 'pungent' and will never forget it either! HAHAHA!!!
Mike

If you really wish to suffer, try and bite one of the seeds. Those are hot as the fleas in Satan's armpits

The chives I have do have purple blossoms and these quickly turn into round clusters of tiny bulbs. I see them sprout up everywhere, and am constantly digging and pulling them up from places where I don't want them growing. Once in a while they even stick to the soaker hoses and sprout up all over where they are stored for the winter. If anyone wants a bunch of the chive bulb clusters let me know, as in about a month or so they should be starting to form. I just break them apart and drop them back in the same area they came from.

Dang I meant to add that there is an Allium Fourm here on GW and as with any of the other forums the folks there are good people and always willin' to talk about their favorite plants. :o)
"hot as the fleas in Satan's armpits' HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
I stealing that one for later use Sara!!!
Mike

While the wild onions/chives/whatever that pop up in lawns & gardens all over the U.S. certainly are edible, as others here have posted - they are STRONG!!!!!! I love both onions & garlic & can usually digest both raw without any problems, however the few times I've sampled the wild ones in my yard, I was reaching for the Pepto Bismol within a very short period of time.

yep, definatley edible... wild garcic onions grow all around here, i usually keep some of them moved into my garden just in case i get sick since they work as a natural antibiotic and strengthen the immune system when eaten raw.

We have an abundance of them on the uncultivated parts of our property. In the winter they grow green grassy chive-tasting leaves, then sprout white flowers, then in the spring die back and leave marble-sized and bigger bulbs all over, just barely beneath the soil surface.

Once out of curiosity I collected a bunch, washed them and roasted them with some olive oil. They had a lovely mild onion/garlic flavor and a creamy texture, but it was a pain getting the good stuff out of the papery skin. Too much work for too little reward for me.

Be sure they aren't crow poison, it can make you sick, and even kill in some cases. Experienced it as a 9 year old, was sick as a pig.

gourdlvr, do you have a link on "crow poison"? i nver heard of it.

"Crow Poison"? What the heck is that?

I think crow poison is made from SQUILL (Scylla), a plant also in the lily Family. Also used for rat poison. I don't think it would be easy to confuse the two. Squill is different from onions/garlics. Paul.

:) a rather frightening 'kids out camping' trick we came up with was to take braids of the wild onion 'grass' and mush hamburger around them, sort of like a floppy kebab. they were then pan-fried over an open fire.

haven't tried that in 20 years, but I remember the onion standing up well to all the abuse ;)

roasting a cluster of the bulbs sounds like an interesting idea-every once in a while, food that's a lot of work to prepare is just what I'm looking for :)

chinacat- that sounds good to me! maybe ours here are not quite as strong. always in moderation, all the same.

the ones i have potted in my flowerbed have now died back for the "summer."

Angie, wild onions are edible. i make onion pickle to eat and give to others, they ate and they didn't know what it was until i tell them. here is the reciep if you want to try:
dig wild onion bulbs out of the ground and soak them in water over night so the dirt, sand can be wash of easily and must remove outer skins , roots, and leaves just like you would do with large white onion. after clean up you only get small bulbs, so make sure you digg lots of them.

mix them bulbs with some red whole red pepper then put all in a jar tightly. mix vinegar with spoon full of suggar(you can add much or less suggar depend on how you like you onion sweet taste.) fill the jar with vinegar+suggar mix make sure all onion are submerge, keep it in room temp- for 5 day and there you have onion pickle.

All,
My yard has fallen victim to either wild garlic or wild onion. I am not sure which is which but I will tell you that whatever they are....I hate them. I will not eat them and I can't stand to smell my hands after digging them up all day. I have tried everything short of blasting them with a hand grenade. Anyway, after some tedious research around the web I realized that I am not alone. I did however find 2 sites that may offer some assistance to those in the same shoes as I am. Might help. www.stwebsite.com and www.killwildonions.com.

Steve

Here is a link that might be useful: Kill Wild Onions, Wild Garlic, and Wild Leeks

I'm very curious about the wild onions and garlic,for edible reasons. I live in west central Fl. Are these plants that I can just walk out in to the woods and find are they that common? I'd like to find out also about other plants that are in my area and wild that can be eaten.

Like cultivated onions, wild onions have a distinctive sharp flavor and scent. Many wild onions have a very strong odor, which can sometimes make them very easy to identify when they are growing in the wild. As a general rule, the leaves, bulb, and flowers of wild onions can all be eaten, with most people concentrating on the leaves, rather than the bulb, as wild onions tend to develop small bulbs with shallow roots.

Tanken from Wikipedian... and I've had some spicy pickled leeks and they are awesom!!!

There are a variety of ways to use wild onions, which may also be called wild leeks in some regions of the world. They can be used in many of the same dishes domestic onions are used in, and they can also be grilled, chopped and used as a garnish, roasted, cooked in sauces, and so forth. The pungent flavor and aroma can be a cause for caution, as a small amount of wild onion will often go a long way

They have white bulbous tops and stalks are usually tall and skinny compared to cultivated onions.

I decided to 'dry' some for seasoning/powdering, then reconsidered and was *just* about to throw the dry husks out... when one of them broke apart and I found it sprouting!

Two years after we'd hung it on the kitchen wall for decoration/air dry.

The sprouts were planted, and are doing fabulously well!

Yes - small pearly white bulbs. Great snacks. Sometimes I would walk into work chewing on them - they're addictive.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Retail Detail blog by Amy Barnes

All wild onions and garlics are edible, just don't confuse them with things like Gagea lutea, not sure what you call it in English but it absolutely doesn't smell oniony or garlicky, so you should be fine. As for me, I don't mind the wild garlic as a weed in my garden! I could use more of it - the deer detest it. When I pull it from my vegetable beds, I replant it around them.

the "wild onions" i'm looking at have long skinny greens which produce several hat pin sized or smaller bulbs on top which eventually sprout tinier hairy looking green shoots out the top and at that time the leaves around the small bulbs begins to dry and the bulbs will fall off if touched. i love the smell of them when the yard is mowed, they sprout up everywhere! i gathered some "seeds" and threw them in a bed with other wild flowers. Do these sound like wild onions, and if so will they grow like this?

Tina,

sounds like you might have egyptian onions...

Here is a link that might be useful: Egyptian onion photo

The poisonous look-a-like to wild onions is called death camas. It looks almost exactly like the wild onion, but it has no onion smell when you crush it.

So, while wild onion is edible and quite delicious actually, just *MAKE SURE* it smells like onion. If it doesn't smell strongly of onion, leave it be. It will make you very sick and is potentially lethal in even relatively small quantities.

My 8 year old son was so proud to be able to pull an edible food right from the ground and present the cluster of bulbs to me, as a gift of love, due to my outspoken preference to spicy, garlicky, and oniony flavors. What was hard to explain, as we read about these magnificent plants put in our soil for immunity well-being and how people go to great lengths to eradicate them with chemicals and herbicides. Ironically enough, will turn around and spend more money on chemical compound pharmaceuticals to boost their immunity systems when ill. Nature is the best marketing tool; disregard the rest.