Plant · P-183

Wild Garlic

Allium ursinum

Wild garlic pushes up leaves in late winter - as early as late January, before almost anything else is ready to cut - flowers in spring, then dies back completely by early summer to sit out the hot months underground. Both the garlic-flavored leaves and the strong bulbs are edible, and where it gets the shade and spring moisture it wants, it spreads into a dense, self-renewing carpet that crowds out winter weeds and then disappears before summer crops need the space. It needs the moist floor of an established deciduous woodland or windbreak - open, sunny ground with no leaf litter will not support it. It's worth learning to tell apart from a similar-looking relative that also goes by the name wild garlic and is a genuine pasture weed - eaten by livestock, it taints milk and meat.