The Story of Onion

This card is Allium cepa, the bulb onion — not chives, garlic, leek, elephant garlic, or a shallot crop card.

How it was found

Kew maps Allium cepa as a cultigen from Central Asia. Native list printed: Turkmenistan. Introduced widely (including California). USDA GRIN: cultivated in Africa, temperate and tropical Asia, Europe, Australia, Canada, Mexico, the United States, and parts of South America — no Native status table.

UC Santa Cruz CASFS: cultivated onions thought native to Central and Southwest Asia — Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Tahoe Basin UCCE MG: bulb onion thought to have evolved in Iran or central Asia; no ancestral form of A. cepa found in the wild. Santa Clara MG: origin Western Asia. Napa MG: cultivation about six thousand years, likely somewhere in Asia or northern Africa. These are not identical statements, and Egypt-use dates are not collapsed into a single origin country.

Tahoe UCCE MG (citing Fritsch & Friesen 2002 as printed): thought domesticated by multiple peoples at least 5000 years ago. UC Santa Cruz: evidence of cultivated onions dates back to 2,800–3,200 BC in Egypt (pyramid decoration and hieroglyphics; bulbs used in embalming/mummification). Santa Clara MG: eaten in Egypt before 3000 B.C.

How people used it

Kew lists food (also animal food). UCCE Stanislaus: alliums have seasoned food for thousands of years; onions and garlic were two of the most important crops consumed in ancient Egypt. UC Santa Cruz: indispensable culinary bulb (soups, stews, stocks, sauces); tunicate/laminate bulb of swollen leaf bases. Santa Clara MG: used for food since very early times; flavoring in nearly every current world culture.

Kew lists medicine with no named remedy. GRIN folklore, Napa indigestion/blisters/dog-bite lines, and Tahoe antiseptic-ointment / WWII lines are skipped.

Timeline

1. 2,800–3,200 BC / before 3000 B.C. (as printed)

   Egypt: food, pyramids, mummies

   UC Santa Cruz CASFS: evidence of cultivated onions dates back to 2,800–3,200 BC in Egypt (pyramid decoration and hieroglyphics; bulbs used in embalming and mummification). Santa Clara MG: eaten in Egypt before 3000 B.C. Tahoe UCCE MG: key food staple in Egypt during both the old and new kingdoms; used in mummification (small onions replaced eyes). Use in Egypt is not Kew’s Central Asia cultigen sentence.

   UC Santa Cruz CASFS; Santa Clara MG; Tahoe UCCE MG

2. At least 5000 years / about six thousand years (as printed; not collapsed)

   Domesticated more than once

   Tahoe UCCE MG: thought domesticated by multiple peoples at least 5000 years ago. Napa MG: onion cultivation about six thousand years, likely Asia or northern Africa. These are UC wordings, not Kew dates, and they are not treated as one number.

   Tahoe UCCE MG; Napa MG

3. 1493 / 1634 / 1640 (as printed)

   Isabella, Pilgrims, Iroquois

   Tahoe Basin UCCE MG: Columbus planted onions on Isabella in 1493; by 1634 the Pilgrims were raising onions for food and trade; Iroquois tribes were growing onions (native and European) in New York by 1640. Three printed landings, not one American origin.

   Tahoe Basin UCCE MG — Spring Planting of Onions

4. 1753

   Named in Species Plantarum

   Kew accepts Allium cepa L., first published in Sp. Pl.: 300 (1753). USDA GRIN: Sp. pl. 1:300. 1753.

   Kew POWO; USDA GRIN

5. 1933 (as printed)

   Grano 502, parent of sweet short-days

   Tahoe Basin UCCE MG: in 1933 the Grano 502, parent of nearly all short-day sweet onions, was trialed by Texas A&M and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A breeding parent, not a wild ancestor — Tahoe still prints that no ancestral form has been found in the wild.

   Tahoe Basin UCCE MG

Cool to know

Growing notes for this plant live on the Plant Wiki. This page is origin and use, not a How-To.