Garden Club
Planted throughout Four Seasons is a weed with green
leaves, yellow bulbs and purple flowers that is entirely edible.
It was named by the Dutch who imported it from South Africa
as "Society Garlic" since it is less pungent than regular garlic
and more suitable for highbrow dinners. Most of the plants
in the genus are pollinated by moths at night while others are
pollinated by bees and butterflies in the daytime.
Society Garlic is a fast-growing, bulbous plant about two feet
tall. Leaves are long, narrow, strap-like, slightly fleshy and smell
strongly of garlic when bruised. They grow from fat, tuberous
roots which spread to form clumps of plants. The pinkish to
mauve, tubular flowers, clustered into umbels of up to twenty
flowers are on flower stalks above the leaves. They smell of
garlic when picked. Triangular capsules replace the flowers
and are grouped into a head. When ripe they split to release
flattened, hard black seeds. Society garlic needs full-sun but
not in a location where it will burn. It flowers from late winter
to autumn yet even though the flowers are gorgeous the foliage
is the main attraction for the garden planting. Deadhead the
petals, including the stalks, once the flowers are spent and in
the fall it needs a good haircut. ~ Leonard Tavernetti
CLUBS & GROUPS | FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | OCTOBER 2013
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