Nodding Wild Onion, Allium cernuum Roth., Native Minnesota Wildflower plant, Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

	Plants of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden
	Common Name	Scientific Name	Plant Family	Garden Location	Prime Season
	Nodding Wild Onion	Allium cernuum Roth.	Lily	Upland	Late Summer to Early Autumn
Other names and notes	Wild onions have either flowers or small bulblets in a rounded umbel. The Nodding Wild Onion has whitish to pink small, 1/4" 6-parted flowers with protruding stamens. The flowers produce a seed capsule, not bulblets. The entire flower head "nods". Leaves are grass-like and usually basal, much shorter than the flower stalk which grows from a conical shape bulb. One to two feet in height.


Flowers above and below early to late August.	Below: Early August flower heads just emerging from their sheaths.

Eloise Butler wrote of this plant: ". . . pink balls of fairy grace lifted on slender, leafless stalks give a magical brilliancy to the billowing grasses of large expanses of the prairie. Do not be disconcerted by the name. The onion is, after all, a sort of lily, considered by every one a flower queen, and the odor is not perceptible, except when the plant is bruised. The leaves of this Allium are very narrow, unlike those of the early leek, so abundant in the wood in early spring." Published Aug. 20, 1911, Minneapolis Sunday Tribune.

Notes: Eloise Butler had catalogued this plant in her plant index as present in the general Garden area in 1907. In her Garden Log she reports planting three plants in the Garden on May 9, 1910 that were obtained from Kelsey's Nurseries in NC. On August 8, 1911 she brought in additional plants collected in Glenwood Park (which surrounds the Garden). It is native to most of Minnesota except for a few counties in the SW quarter and in the Northwest, however it is endangered and is listed as a "threatened" species on the Minnesota endangered plants list. A subspecies Allium cernuum Roth. cernuum has similar distribution.

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References: Plant characteristics are generally from sources 15, 16, 30, 31, 33, W2 & W3. Distribution principally from W2 and also 31, 34 and W1. Planting history generally from 1, 4 & 4a. Other sources by specific reference. See Reference List for details.

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