Onionweed
Asphodelus fistulosus
Family · Asphodelaceae · Harmless
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The small asphodel of southern verges, with hollow straw-like leaves and a slender stem of white flowers each petal striped brown. It marks dry, poor, heavily trampled ground.
Roadsides and waste ground · Fields and pasture · Dunes and sand · Scrubland
Also known ashollow-stemmed asphodel, pink asphodel
How to tell it
Basal leaves fine, cylindrical and hollow, like chives, which gives the scientific name. A stem thirty to seventy centimetres tall, far slimmer than the great asphodel's, with white or pinkish six-parted flowers, each piece with a brown or reddish midrib.
What it is confused with
Branched asphodel
Asphodelus ramosus
The great asphodel has broad flat strap leaves and a thick, much branched stem to a metre and a half; this has hollow reed leaves and a slender stem. Neither is eaten.
What it is for
No food use. It is a clear indicator of degraded, overgrazed soil, and is considered an aggressive invader in Australia and the southern United States, where it was taken from the Peninsula.