Grape hyacinth
Muscari neglectum
Family · Asparagaceae · Poisonous
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.
The cluster of dark blue, nearly black beads with a white mouth, appearing on verges and in olive groves in spring. It looks like a tiny bunch of grapes turned upside down.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Scrubland · Town and roadside
Also known ascommon grape hyacinth, starch hyacinth
How to tell it
Narrow, channelled basal leaves, often lying untidily on the ground. A stem with a dense raceme of closed-ball flowers, dark blue to nearly black, with six little white teeth at the mouth. At the top of the raceme sit paler, scentless sterile flowers. It grows from a small bulb.
What it is confused with
Wild garlics
Allium spp.
Crush a leaf and smell: wild garlics smell unmistakably of garlic, grape hyacinth smells of nothing. This test settles most bulb confusions, but not all, and so nothing is gathered without certainty.
What it is for
None to encourage. The bulb contains saponins and is toxic, and confusion with wild chives or garlic is easy and has caused poisonings. Simple rule: a bulb that does not smell of garlic or onion is neither garlic nor onion.