Plant · P-363

Nodding Onion

Allium cernuum

Nodding onion is a native prairie bulb whose bulb, leaf and flower are all edible raw or cooked, with a spicy onion bite - some of the best eating of any wild onion relative. It grows through the cool part of the year and goes summer dormant, its foliage disappearing after a mid-to-late-summer bloom, so it needs no summer water once established. That late bloom feeds butterflies and hummingbirds at a point in the season when almost nothing else nearby is still flowering. Unusually for the genus, it actively prefers alkaline soil above pH 7.2 rather than merely tolerating it.