#wood garlic

[jillraggett]

Plant of the Day

Thursday 28 May 2026

In this woodland the native Allium ursinum (wild garlic, ramsons, buckram, broad-leaved garlic, wood garlic, bear leek, bear’s garlic) was filling the air with a distinctive and pungent garlicky smell. This bulbous perennial has white flowers and broad leaves.

Jill Raggett

[samirafee]

#ALLIUM URSINUM - WOOD GARLIC

@samirafee

[trolledu]

wood garlic found in the Polish Carpathains

[faguscarolinensis]

Allium neopolitanum / Neopolitan Garlic at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University in Durham, NC

[angiec333]

Wild Garlic

Image available at Picfair

[raegi-foto]

Wild garlic

By raegi.ch

[regnum-plantae]

Allium ursinum, Amaryllidaceae

If you have ever walked in the woods in temperate parts of Europe, particularly in the British Isles, you might have happened to smell something garlicky during spring, right when the buds are breaking up in the trees. Ramsons, wood or bear’s garlic - it is known in a few more ways just in English - was probably the culprit. Here in Scotland its white star-shaped flowers follow the small and often solitary ones of A. paradoxum, another common Allium which I’ll write about in a different post. 

All parts of the plant are edible and often harvested from the wild, but it is also easy to establish in a garden, especially in the shady and humid areas avoided by many other plants with higher light requirements. If you are foraging in the woods I would suggest harvesting the plant when the flower stalk has already given away its identity, together with the smell, as the young shoots emerging from the ground can be pretty similar to some toxic spring geophytes, like Convallaria majalis, the lily of the valley. I remember A. ursinum in the woods in northern Italy, but it looks a lot more at home and plentiful here in Scotland. 

[jillraggett]

Plant of the Day

Thursday 8 May 2025

This urban border is in deep shade and has become filled with Allium ursinum (wild garlic, ramsons, cowleek, buckrams, broad-leaved garlic, wood garlic, bear leek). This edible plant can be an indicator of ancient woodland in the UK.

Jill Raggett