Allium tricoccum
| Allium tricoccum | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Clade: | Angiosperms |
| Clade: | Monocots |
| Order: | Asparagales |
| Family: | Amaryllidaceae |
| Subfamily: | Allioideae |
| Genus: | Allium |
| Species: | A. tricoccum |
| Binomial name | |
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Allium tricoccum Ait. 1789 not Blanco 1837 |
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| Synonyms | |
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Synonymy
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Allium tricoccum (commonly known as ramp, ramps, spring onion, ramson, wild leek, wood leek, and wild garlic) is a North American species of wild onion widespread across eastern Canada and the eastern United States. Many of these English names are used for other Allium species, particularly Allium ursinum.
Allium tricoccum is a bulb-forming perennial with broad, smooth, light green leaves, often with deep purple or burgundy tints on the lower stems, and a scallion-like stalk and bulb. Both the white lower leaf stalks and the broad green leaves are edible. The flower stalk appears after the leaves have died back, unlike the similar Allium ursinum, in which leaves and flowers can be seen at the same time. Ramps grow in close groups strongly rooted just beneath the surface of the soil.
Allium tricoccum was first named in 1789 by the Scottish botanist William Aiton, in Hortus Kewensis, a catalog of plants cultivated in London's Kew botanic garden. The species had been introduced to Britain in 1770. The specific epithet tricoccum refers to the possession of three seeds.
As of May 2014[update], the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families accepts two varieties:
This treatment is followed by other sources (e.g. the Flora of North America), although the two taxa are sometimes treated as two species, Allium tricoccum and Allium burdickii.A. tricoccum var. burdickii was first described by Clarence Robert Hanes in 1953; the epithet burdickii is in honor of Dr. J.H. Burdick who pointed out differences between what were then regarded as different "races" in letters to Asa Gray. The variety was raised to a full species by Almut Gutter Jones in 1979.
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