Spring Flowers

The wild garlic (ramsons) is just coming into flower. The leaves are great in salads or made into pesto.

Wild garlic with flowers

The flowers are delicious, they have a strong garlic flavour with a nice touch of sweetness and creaminess.

Wild garlic flowers

Tulips are beautiful, this is taken in Nunhead Cemetery. According to Twinkel’s article in the latest Funky Raw magazine they are edible but somehow they look too good to eat!

Tulip flower closeup

I don’t know what this is but it is very pretty. It’s in Peckham Rye Park.

Peckham rye pink flowers

Close up of pink flowers

(Click on any photo to enlarge.)

7 thoughts on “Spring Flowers

  1. “Your photo above is wild leek which is known in England as ramps.”

    I’m fairly convinced that the above photo is Ramsons, Latin Allium ursinum. Do a google image search for ramsons and you will see lots of people agree with me http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&source=imghp&q=ramsons&btnG=Search+Images

    Of course the problem is that many plants have multiple common names, and some of those overlap, there are several plants which seem to have the common name Wild Garlic, which is why we really should use the Latin names.

    As for ramps, according to Wikipedia, “Allium tricoccum, also known as ramps, spring onions, ramson, wild leeks, wild garlic…” so common names really are fairly pointless…

  2. And according to a couple of websites, the leaves of ramps die down before the flowers fully open, whereas with ramsons, as seen above, the flowers are open at the same times as the leaves.

  3. hi,

    your picture above is indeed ramsons. i think its missleading to call them “wild garlic” however, just as its missleading to call ramps “wild leeks”. domestic garlic did not derive from ramsons and domestic leeks did not derive from ramps. those “names” are just what people think they taste like.

    also, ramsons grow in europe while ramps grow in north america.

    i’ve found the plant you have called “wild leeks” growing in my area and it tastes like garlic, so i call it “wild garlic”. so far i’ve found no evidence to contradict this assesment.

    • I’ve occasionally seen wild garlic for sale on farmers markets, but very rarely. You can only get it in season anyway, which is around Jan to April. Best to try and find some in the wild!

  4. Wild garlic/leek whatever you call it it – DO NOT be tempted to dig up the bulbs and plant them in your garden. I did that only 3 years ago and now my entire garden is over run with them. they spead by bulb division but worse the self seed by the thousands and thousands and these seeds get blown everywhere (including cracks in the paving, around the edge of buildings, into your lawns and flower beds – EVERYWHERE.) They are commonly know as the cockroach of the weed world and (as I’ve learned to my peril) vertually impossible to irradicate.

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