Crow garlic
Allium vineale
A slender grassland allium with hollow, cylindrical leaves that smell strongly of garlic when crushed. In summer it throws up a stiff stem topped with a tight head of purple-brown bulbils, sometimes with a few pink flowers among them, opening from a papery sheath. Leaves, bulbils and the small white bulb are all edible, with a pungent garlic-onion flavour that is coarser and hotter than cultivated garlic and works best cooked or used sparingly raw.
Dry, well-drained grassland: verges, field margins, churchyards, coastal turf and light sandy or disturbed ground. Widespread and common in lowland England and Wales, thinner in Scotland and Ireland. Persistent in arable and garden soil, where it behaves as a weed.
Edible raw or cooked, but the flavour is strong and quantities of raw leaf or bulb can upset the stomach; people who react to onions and garlic should treat it the same way. Star-of-Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum) shares the same short turf and has similarly narrow leaves, but they are flat with a white central stripe and give no allium smell when crushed — no smell, no picking. Avoid roadside verges for pollution, and note that digging up bulbs needs the landowner's permission.
Always use more than one reference to confirm a plant. You are responsible for what you choose to forage.
Flower head
A tight, egg-shaped cluster of purplish-brown bulbils, each often sprouting a fine green tail, sitting on a stiff stem 30–100cm tall. Pink or greenish flowers on thin stalks may be mixed in or absent entirely; a head of bulbils alone is normal here.
Spathe
The head opens from a single papery hood that falls away early, leaving no long persistent points. Field Garlic (Allium oleraceum) is the near neighbour in similar grassland and keeps two long, tapering spathe valves standing well beyond the head.
Leaves
Slender, hollow and round to half-round in cross-section, grooved along the upper face, sheathing the lower half of the stem. Roll one between finger and thumb: grasses and Star-of-Bethlehem are flat or keeled and solid, never tubular.
Bulb
A small white bulb under a thin papery tunic, usually with several offset bulblets clustered against it, sitting a few centimetres down in firm turf. Rarely bigger than a fingernail, so it takes a lot for a meal.
Smell
Crushed leaf or bulb gives an immediate, sharp garlic-onion smell. This is the decisive test: anything narrow-leaved from the same turf that smells of nothing is not an allium and should be left.
Updated 2026-08-08T11:13:27.803Z · Part of the shared Foragers Log catalogue · Vegetable