Allium cepa

Garden onion

Family: Alliaceae · Type: perennial · Not Native

Garden onion is a naturalized perennial found in disturbed agricultural and transport areas at elevations below 500 meters. Flowering from July to August, this plant produces white to pink or light green flowers in clusters of 150 to 500 blooms, forming star- to bell-shaped flower heads. Growing with hollow stems 30 to 100 centimeters tall that are inflated below the middle, it develops a depressed-spherical bulb 5 to 8 centimeters wide with white, yellow, brown, or red outer layers. Its leaves are 4 to 10 in number, 10 to 50 centimeters long and 4 to 20 millimeters wide, sheathing the lower portion of the stem and generally semicircular in cross-section. The bulb contains multiple layers and is the familiar culinary onion used in cooking worldwide.

Habitat: The onion of commerce, found along roadsides, disturbed places near where plants are grown commercially or along routes of transport

Bloom period: Jul-Aug

Elevation: < 500 m

Bioregions: Found wherever onions are cultivated.

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.