A diverse patch of shallots

[triffid]

The more I look at these the more they look like chives (sorry Steph).

Does any other allium have a flower like these?

[Steph S]

No worries, I am over my disappointment about these alliums, whatever they are. 
I should update to say that my transplant experiment did not result in any bulbs.  They did produce fatter shoots, and divided only a bit, so I think the general advice about spacing fairly close in rows for a shallot from seed is probably good.  But no sign of a bulb to be found. I dug some up in the fall and left some others to harvest in the spring.
What they do have is a couple of inches of fairly hard white oniony stem at the bottom, at least in fall.  In spring they may have been more tender but still a few inches of white fleshed 'green oniony' length.  Those with red or pink color, it did not extend into the flesh but was only a residual ring on the skin of the stem.   The ones I ate this fall had a surprisingly sweet onion taste.  It is pleasant enough but the small diameter is a bit of a bother if hoping, as I was, for something on the order of a bulb.  I am not fond of tedious chopping.
Since my friend the chef was pleased with them this spring, I foresee they'll become part of the spring CSA, dug and divided and served forth with lovage and overwintered parsnips or cellar potatoes.   And I'm happy enough to have provided some early season bee fodder.

I still don't think they taste anything like chives - our chives really don't taste like any other allium.  If your chives taste like green onions, I should send you seeds of ours to taste.   Also our chives don't have anything like a white stem as found in green onions of various types.  They are green leaf right to the base of the stem.   Are your chives not the same?

I also wondered if the original 'shallot' bulbs that these seeds came from may have been a hybrid between a bulb onion and a multiplier, where the 'multiply' genes were dominant to the bulbing genes.  but if so, then you would expect at least some bulbers to come from the seeds I shared with you (which would be F2).

I do still think it would be interesting to cross these with a good bulb onion, but I don't think I can make it happen this year.  Still it would be a good way to test that it is allium cepa.

[Garrett Schantz]

Edgewood Nursery has a bunch of different alliums - some similar to chives - Allium angulosum, Allium cernuum, Allium nutans etc. Some allium species can hybridize somewhat easily as well. Allium fistulosum - bunching onions can look similar as well I suppose.

[Ferdzy]

I came to suspect that these might be a species of allium other than cepa. What do people think about them being a selection of allium lusitanicum? It seems to be a common and quite variable wild onion, and the flowers, at least in some cases, look more chive-like than anything else i can find out there.

[triffid]

Chives here are the same Steph; a uniquely flavoured herb.

A few reasons why I'm considering the possibility that they are chives, albeit oddly flavoured chives, or have chive genes:
The distinctively dense umbel averaging 40 mauve cone-shaped flowers with purple midveins (1). The attached figure (2) illustrates chive flowers alongside other alliums;
They are winter dormant, and even die back in cold winters, which is unique among cultivated alliums (2);
Their relatively small, elliptical seeds are characteristic of chives, with appx. 1150 per gram compared to onions at 300 per gram (2).

Chive bulb formation is controlled by a minimum of two recessive genes; bulbing is dominant in other alliums (3). Asatsuki あさつき, A. schoenoprasum var. foliosum, is a cultivar grown in Japan which is harvested for its bulbs and shoots in spring.
The F1 progeny of bulbing x non-bulbing interspecific allium hybrids form bulbs; but the F1 progeny of bulbing chives x fistulosum do not form bulbs (3).

So if your shallots are a hybrid of a bulbing allium and chives, bulbs wouldn't be observable until later generations.
But if it is an interspecific hybrid, how likely would it be that it produces so much viable seed?

1. Choi, H. and Cota-Sánchez, J., 2010. A taxonomic revision of Allium (Alliaceae) in the Canadian prairie provinces. Botany, [online] 88(9), pp.787-809. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263500245_A_taxonomic_revision_of_Allium_Alliaceae_in_the_Canadian_prairie_provinces
2. Brewster, J., 2008. Onions And Other Vegetable Alliums. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: CABI North American Office, pp.47, 168.
3. Xiao, J., Ureshino, K., Hosoya, M., Okubo, H. and Suzuki, A., 2010. Inheritance of Bulb Formation in Allium schoenoprasum L. Journal of the Japanese Society for Horticultural Science, 79(3), pp.282-286. Available at: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjshs1/79/3/79_3_282/_pdf

[Garrett Schantz]

That would be a very interesting hybrid... I haven't grown chives in awhile so I bought some cheap seeds from the store.

[Ferdzy]

Triffid, it did seem to me too that they might be a chive x ? hybrid. They look like chives, but not quite; they flower like chives, but not quite; they smell like chives, but not quite. Etc. It seems "quite" possible to me.

[Steph S]

Fantastic diagram, triffid.  And reasoning.
Very helpful for me, since I (obviously!) know next to nothing about alliums.    Who knew there are chives that bulb.  wow.
If the chivey taste turned up in Ferdzy's generation but not in mine, maybe it is a chive cross.

[Steph S]

The more I look at these the more they look like chives (sorry Steph).

Does any other allium have a flower like these?

I did find a pic of a red onion flower at this site:
https://whiskerflowers.wordpress.com/2019/08/17/common-garden-globe-onion-how-to-grow-vegetable-of-the-month/
And TBH it looks just like them to me.  It's the gardener's photo of a flower from her globe onion Starke Ayres red creole (not a shallot).
Here's a direct link to the image:
https://whiskerflowers.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/onion-flowers-purple-allium-cepa-var-cepa-common-garden-globe-onion-copy.jpg

[AndrewB]

Looks like I came in late to an interesting discussion. I need to go back and read what I missed.

Im starting to get into growing green onions (scallions) this year. I bought a red F1 hybrid online that looked cool.

I'm also on the hunt for scallion x chive hybrid onion. Apparently they can cross and the cross has better flavor and more edible parts than either parent species.

https://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search.do?recordID=JP2007005406

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10681-005-9029-8

[triffid]

Who knew there are chives that bulb.  wow.

I know right?! Chive bulbs, where have you been my whole life? In Japan, but not in my pan. Woe.

I did find a pic of a red onion flower at this site:
https://whiskerflowers.wordpress.com/2019/08/17/common-garden-globe-onion-how-to-grow-vegetable-of-the-month/
And TBH it looks just like them to me.  It's the gardener's photo of a flower from her globe onion Starke Ayres red creole (not a shallot).
Here's a direct link to the image:
https://whiskerflowers.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/onion-flowers-purple-allium-cepa-var-cepa-common-garden-globe-onion-copy.jpg

The picture is lovely, I can see why they chose it, though it's not the author's original work. They credit the source, it's a stock image and the photographer titles it as 'ornamental onion'.
https://pixabay.com/photos/allium-ornamental-onion-flowers-4274441/
Odd that the author would re-label it as Allium cepa. They also claim that common onions have light purple to white flowers, which isn't completely true.
A. cepa flowers are invariably white, unlike the blooms of leek and garlic which are white to purple. The florets of these species open in a seemingly random order, and there are hundreds per umbel.  But in chives, the florets are far less numerous and open in a regular pattern from top to bottom.  You can see in stock photo that the florets at the apex of the umbels are senescing and older than the ones at the base. And considering their colour and floret shape, that would point to them being chive flowers, but I'm not an expert and learning what I can here and there. Brewster's been helping me through some tough allium times.

I'm also on the hunt for scallion x chive hybrid onion. Apparently they can cross and the cross has better flavor and more edible parts than either parent species.

Yes, however in that study they are developed by ovary culture, which is why I was questioning the likelyhood of these 'shallots' producing so much viable seed if they are spontaneous interspecific hybrids.
Full text https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236000501_Interspecific_hybrids_between_Allium_fistulosum_and_Allium_schoenoprasum_reveal_carotene-rich_phenotype

[Steph S]

Oops sorry about the wrongly identified pic.The internet has a maddening number of things labeled 'onion flowers' which are actually other alliums. Especially those "stock photos".  
I can't agree that bulb onions are invariably white flowered, though, since we had a red onion set that bolted at the farm some years ago and had a light purple flower.  This was the reason I (wrongly!) assumed that all red onions would have purple flowers.  It seems that white is the rule, but there also seem to be exceptions.
I do agree that the flower morphology is more chive-like than like the bulb onion.  I just can't tell from what I'm finding on the internet, which other alliums are very similar.   I did find an article comparing the flowering of bulb onion and shallot but am unable to access it.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/297521
Turning to other traits, I could not find anything with google about alliums with different stem or sheath colors either as shown in my pics, it's giving me rice.    I give up...

[Steph S]

Okay I have found something else to offer!

Allium cepa
http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:527795-1 does show a purplish flowered cultivar.
They have no listing for cepa var aggregatum, however please see the purple flower in the picture given for:
Allium ascalonicum
http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:30185627-2

I notice that in the list of old synomyms for A cepa they also included A ascalonicum var fertile and var infertile, with reference I suppose to those that flower freely and those that don't.
Although the entries don't say much beyond nomenclature and pictures they have actual listings of many alliums with pictures of their flowers, so it's a resource for botanical identification much better than my random googles were providing.  There are a lot of interesting edible alliums!

However, without resorting to interspecies crosses, I think the present group from these seeds are probably best identified as shallot.

[triffid]

I can't agree that bulb onions are invariably white flowered, though, since we had a red onion set that bolted at the farm some years ago and had a light purple flower. 

My mistake, I got the info from Brewster, 2008.

That ascalonicum flower is beautiful, a wonderful blue. Apparently it also goes by A. hierochuntinum. It fits a lot better with the appearance of your shallots. The florets do appear to open in an irregular order however, which is different from your plants.
https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/Allium_ascalonicum

I'm not sure what you mean by different stem or sheath colours, do you mean the basal part that breaks through the soil first?

[Steph S]

I meant the different colors of the stem at the base, which is like a sheath formed by the outer leaf, as best shown in posts #24 and #46.  These colors weren't noticeable to me in the first year (or I didn't pay attention) but if you have some in the ground, you should see this clearly when they emerge in the spring, it's most noticeable when they get to be about 6 inches tall.  I'm not sure if sheath was the term used in something I read.

The nomenclature is certainly confusing, but I believe A ascalonicum with the blue flower is a different wild species.  However, A ascalonicum is also used to refer to shallot.  Was used, and still is used by some - if you use search terms "A ascalonicum shallot" you will find lots of references in the literature.  Some also switched to "A cepa var ascalonicum" for shallot.   The flower in the picture which I linked is purple, not blue.  Very chive like.