Onion Grass

Common Name:

General Description:

Perennial herb, rising annually from a brown coated globular corm about 1 cm diameter.

Leaves 3 – 10, all rising from the base of the plant, tough and grass-like, to 30 cm long 1 – 2 mm wide, with blunt edges and a prominent midrib.

Flowers 2 –4 per plant, pink to rosy purple with a yellow throat, with six equal spreading lanceolate petals, about 20 mm across, solitary at the end of a short stout stalk and subtended by 2 membranous bracts.

Fruit a wrinkled broadly oblong capsule, 6 – 10 mm long.

Flowering spring

Occurrence:

Generally grasslands or open woodlands; also in gardens and along roadsides, often on soils which are relatively bare.