Native. Perennial. Propagates by aerial bulblets, occasionally by seeds. Time of bloom: May to June.

Seeds: Seldom produced; aerial bulblets ripen in July and August. Range: Maine to Minnesota, southward to the Gulf of Mexico. Habitat: Moist meadows, pastures, and thickets.

The range of native species of Onion or Garlic is more extensive, but not one of them is so rank in taste and odor, or so difficult to exterminate, as the immigrant Field Garlic. Most of them have a preference for low, moist soil and the shade of thickets, and disappear before drainage and cultivation. This one is most adaptive and therefore most troublesome. Its bulblets are slightly larger than grains of wheat or rye, so that they are not difficult of removal with a sieve of proper-sized mesh. But often the weed is a plague of pasture and meadow, to the detriment of dairy products. (Fig. 44.)

Bulb small, distinguishable from that of the Field Garlic by its coat, which is fibrous and netted instead of a soft, membranous skin, and by the leaves, which rise directly from the bulb instead of being borne part of the way up the flowerstalk, and are flattened in cross section. Flowerstalk eight inches to two feet in height, round, and smooth; umbel large, the flowers pink, sometimes almost white, very numerous. Aerial bulblets ovoid, plump, their capillary appendage sometimes exceeding an inch in length.

Measures for extermination the same as recommended for Field Garlic.