Allilium of the Valley


  • Used for: medicine (heart, blood pressure)
  • Food for : bees and other insects
  • Features: Attracts Italian food lovers, keeps the werewolves awake (no, it doesn't keep them away. That's vampires you're thinking of. It just keeps them awake.)
  • Native to: Middle East, widely naturalized elsewhere

    Summer is a time of heat and aroma -- the smell of dusty back roads, the heavy wet smell of the creek banks, the subtle odor of wildflowers along the hillsides, the time when the allium species are ready to harvest.

    That's garlic, to you, and a popular ingredient in almost everything -- at least if you live around Gilroy, California. Gilroy is the home of the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival, the oldest and largest garlic festival. Surprisingly, garlic festivals are fairly popular. There's one in Washington, DC, one in Hudson Valley, one in Calaveris County, to name three that popped up on the web.

    Garlic is one of those vegetables that lots of people love and almost nobody thinks to grow -- mainly because many seem to like it only in small doses and one clove goes a looong looong way. Bees, surprisingly, don't share that sort of prejudice and will happily zoom off to browse the garlic flowers -- so garlic in your garden is not only good for your heart and keeping vampires away, it also provides food for the bees in the area. This keeps the bees happy.

    Unfortunately, it keeps the beekeepers UNhappy, because garlic flowers taste like garlic -- and so far nobody's found any market for garlic-flavored honey. The bees don't seem to mind the combination, though, and the garlic benefits from these busy pollinators.

    Garlic is a member of the onion family -- a fact that comes as a surprise to almost no one. It's an easy plant for travelers to grow, requiring little water and little tending. This contributed to its spread throughout the world.

    Agriculture scientists think that it originated in Asia but quickly migrated for more promising lands. It's naturalized across the world and can be found growing wild in many countries. Garlic was worshipped by the ancient Egyptians, chewed by Greek Olympian athletes and kept vampires away and werewolves awake! Studies have also shown that it makes a pretty decent bacteriacide, helps keep your heart healthy, and might even help ward off coughs or colds (eat enough garlic and nobody will get close enough to give you a cold!)

    The copyright of the article Allilium of the Valley in Wildscaping is owned by Mel. White. Permission to republish Allilium of the Valley in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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