Question

Odd Plant #1   QUESTION: I have an odd-looking plant in my garden that I have no idea what it is.  Can you help me identify it?  Thank you very much!

ANSWER: Hi Janet,
Thanx for your question.  The plant you have is some kind of allium.  Hard to say without seeing any more of the plant.  Alliums are in the lily family and yours looks like a wild onion or a garlic plant.  Alliums are the onions and garlics.  Many of them flower beautifully in a variety of different colors but this one looks like a wild garlic.  I hope this helps.
Tom

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Weird plant-entire   QUESTION: Thank you very much for the information.  How interesting!  The plant has so smell, and the stems are tubular and hollow.  The base is sort of segmented.  I am enclosing another photo.  This plant appeared last year after we had dug up an area at the back of our garage in order to plant a perennial garden.  I had transplanted some daffoldil bulbs in the same general area, but clearly this is not a daffodil.  I did not plant anything else in the area.  Are these edible?  Thanks again!
Janet

Answer
Hi Janet,
Thanx for the follow up.  It's definitely an allium.  Allium is just the genus of onion-type plants which comprise a large group of wild and domesticated plants.  Some of them bloom beautifully like flowering onions, leeks, etc.  Some don't flower at all but form seed-heads like the one in your pic.  Some, like the walking onion, will send form bulbs in the seed head and weigh the head down to the ground and begin growing a new plant.  Yours is probably a wild form.  You should take it to your local County Extension office and have the horticulture agent have a look at it and maybe s/he can identify exactly what type it is.  It is unusual for them not to have any scent at all.  If you need contact information let me know your county.  You're in Maine right?
thx,
Tom