Wild leek
Allium ampeloprasum
Family · Amaryllidaceae · Harmless
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
The tall purple ball seen on verges and in vineyards in early summer. Before the flower opens it is just some long leaf, and that is when smell decides everything.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Walls and rocks · Montado
Also known asbroadleaf wild leek, elephant garlic
How to tell it
Crush a leaf: it must smell of garlic, strongly. Long flat keeled leaves, and a head of purplish-pink flowers the size of a tennis ball.
What it is confused with
Autumn crocus
Colchicum autumnale
There is one rule and it never fails: if it does not smell of garlic, it is not garlic. Autumn crocus leaves are broad, glossy and completely scentless, and the plant is deadly. Always smell before picking.
What it is for
Bulbs and leaves used like garlic or leek in Iberian country cooking. It is the wild ancestor of the elephant garlic sold at markets.
Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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