Can a walking onion make a baby chive?

Crazy question:  I've grown Egyptian Walking Onions for 8 or 10 years in the same spot.  Needless to say, since I live in suburbia, I have to regularly trim or give away my onion babies each year.  

This year, I've been experimenting with containers and so I planted a few shallot bulbs in the middle of a container and surrounded it with transplanted walking onion shoots, thinking I'd get a little extra green onion harvest. They looked beautiful, and then they flowered. But they look like chive blossoms!  My chives are in the back yard and these are in the front yard, so I don't think I sowed them.  The green "leaves" are a bit fatter than chives and just looked like young walking onions.

Funny huh?  At least the containers look good.  Anyone else ever seen this?

Those look like chives to me.  Are you sure you didnt get them confused?

What ever those are ... enjoy!

I found out recently that Egyptian walking onions are a hybrid between a Welsh onion (Allium fistulosum) and a cultivated onion (Allium cepa)

I know that whilst most welsh onions have white flowers, you do get some with various shades of purple flowers.

You said you'd been growing Egyptian onions in the same spot for several years - I wonder if some of the ones you transplanted into the pot were actually seedlings from the hybrid Egyptian onion? It's probably rare, but if they did manage to produce a flower and fertile seed, maybe one of those seeds grew into something resembling a Welsh onion, like a throwback to one of the parents? Or maybe only one flower was produced and it got pollinated by a chive?

Here's a link to the wiki page on welsh onion

Aha - I just found this!

Although the Egyptian Walking Onion is a top-setting onion, it will occasionally produce miniature flowers among its topsets. The flowers are about 1/4" wide. They have 6 white petals and 6 stamens. Each petal has a vertical pea-green stripe. Most of the flowers dry up and wither as the topsets compete with them for energy. Flowers seem to occur more often in crowded situations when the plant is older and has divided in the ground for two or more years forming a large clump of around 20 or more bulbs in the ground.
Do they produce seeds?
Egyptian Walking Onion flowers really don't get a chance to produce a seed. My guess is because they are competing with growing topsets on the same stalk. So an Egyptian Walking Onion seed is a rarity - at least I've never seen a mature and viable one.
   

From egyptianwalkingonion.com

That is really interesting!  The established clumps I have are large and crowded.  They did make some white flowers over the bulblets at the top last year.  Usually a new clump grows several little sprouts all together because each stem of bulblets at the top of the plant fall over together and plant themselves.  But the ones I transplanted were all single sprouts -- I thought that would be easier to get greens in my container that were already individually apart instead of breaking up a baby clump of sprouts.  

Thanks so much for the responses.  Because the flowers really look like chives!

Please, please, please keep records of all this. With photos. And share them here. I think this is fascinating.

It does sound like you accidentally selected for seedlings by picking out the single plants rather than from clumps.

Maybe the original clump of walking onions will flower again. If they do, maybe you could bag the flowers and save the seed so you can plant it in a separate pot and then if it grows you will know for sure if it's fertile seed from the hybrid walking onions.

Maybe try to save seed from the babies too to see what happens.

Burra Maluca wrote:Please, please, please keep records of all this. With photos. And share them here. I think this is fascinating.

It does sound like you accidentally selected for seedlings by picking out the single plants rather than from clumps.

Maybe the original clump of walking onions will flower again. If they do, maybe you could bag the flowers and save the seed so you can plant it in a separate pot and then if it grows you will know for sure if it's fertile seed from the hybrid walking onions.

Maybe try to save seed from the babies too to see what happens.

Great idea again!  I will make records.  And save seed if it happens.  But what if these babies aren't as good as the hybrid?  The walking onions are pretty reliable source of onions year after year.  I have to go out of my way to make the clumps smaller and use them all !  So far the babies have pretty flowers, which I'll use in salads.

Nevertheless, I love a good science experiment.  So I will let you know what happens.  Thanks for the ideas.

Those look…exactly like chives. Is it possible they were in the soil already I wonder? Can chives cross with walking onions? Probably not im guessing. When chives are divided out individually they get shallot or scallion like leaves because of the extra spacing.

In suburbia I’d suppose one has no idea who is lurking in the soil. Chives are short lived when dried but maybe they can stay viable in the soil for a very long time?

Seeds can get around and stay small for a while. There was a garlic chive and a perennial ground cherry both of whom somehow got into a clay pot (did I plant and then forget? Swept up from the table?) and grew for years in miniature because of the extreme heat, cold, dryness, etc. They stayed tiny until last spring I transplanted out the ground cherry and the plant made flowers and delicious fruit. The garlic chive was apparently released by this and grew bigger this spring, somehow knowing exactly when to come out of the ground (I kept the pot inside for the winter, with a spider plant inside.)

More updates on my walking onions.  They are flowering at the top again this year.  Lots of little white flowers on top of the bulblets.  Here's some pictures.

I'll see if they make viable seed.  When should I bag the flowers?

With all those bulbils, why bother with seeds?  BTW, I have read that not all Egyptian Walking Onions make seeds.

It has been several years since the feral hogs ate all my Egyptian Walking Onions and I still have bulbils.  I keep thinking that I would plants them though I keep telling myself that those would just be more pig food.

I tried growing the onions in pots though they did not do well.

I have the same going on. A bit too closely grown walking onions making seed like pods. I've taken one that fell over, got broken and yellow. I want the seeds. Why? Because plants degenerate if they're grown only from bulbils or bulbettes. They are all clones. Most garlic is clones. If a disease overcomes the genetic code and there is no diversity in the population it can be dangerous. We might lose them. Diversity populations, hybrid swarms, grexes, that's where the future heirlooms are born. Hybrid vigor is what we're after and this can easier happen if we experiment together as the online community we are. I've planted some  true garlic bulbils that are known to flower and seed and this breeder is extremely knowlegable about all things Allium. Hopefully i can entice him to react here on the Permies.

Hugo Morvan wrote: I've planted some  true garlic bulbils that are known to flower and seed .

A related topic: are you saying we shouldn't eat the delicious garlic scapes on hardneck garlic?  I'm not sure I can make that sacrifice :)  But again, I have a small yard!

No haha, we doesn't exist, at least not in a way that somebody gets to decide who eats what! Thank god no!
I'm a big, big saver of seeds. I'm just venting the GoingToSeed common breeders wisdom on why trying to save seeds from stuff especially from plants you can easily clone or propagate from cuttings.
like there used to be so many apple varieties that you could eat a different one everyday for over a year and a far end into the next year and now it's decimated. Used to be ten times as much variety on offer in seed catalogues. There are hundreds of varieties of bananas, but the industry uses only one of them. we've lost so much diversity that was made by careful selection of farmers exchanging seeds. Open pollinated seeds, and farmers didn't used to care so much about pure varieties. Because mechanization wasn't a thing for them. Us the average gardeners and permaculturists are nothing but an afterthought to the seed industry. An industry that caters to mechanization, transportability, looks not taste and only cares to select for plants that need to be chemically bathed, weak frankenfoods. They care nothing for us and the concept of future or community is alien to them. They only care about filling their fat pockets. The industry has bred weak plants on purpose, because the same owners control the cides industry, cides and fertilizers become obligations. And if people get sick the same companies sell us cures. While shareholders push them into maximizing profits making everybody sicker and plants weaker.
But never mind the bad guys, we're seed savers and therefor plant breeders if we know it or not.. Populations change overtime and the more genetic diversity you put in their the bigger changes we can expect. Not always positive, but we're scanning for the best and nature kills of the weakest so they cannot propagate naturally.
If disease strikes it will mean that diversified populations allow for better chances of survivors. Survivors that will kickstart a disease free new breed.
I'm not saying that this is all we should be doing... At all. It would be wise to do that. But hey most people are rather lazy and don't care about saving seeds, they just buy small plants. Which is great too. But i'm just trying to explain and probably doing an awful job at it that we could move permaculture forward if we would do all the seedsaving and sharing we possibly can to get back to robust and tasty produce which is diverse in shape and color.
In Europe we're sending each other seeds that work for us. That has done more for what i can grow as a gardener than any permaculture trick has so far. I'm not saying don't do permaculture, i'm saying it's another arrow on my bow of growing stuff. And it's a very powerful one. It's 'and this and that' for me and not 'or this or that'.
But if people want to be laid back and not save seeds and help build a better future, fine by me. But i do and will tell people about it.

Took them off this morning. If I find one seed! But I know it's super complicated in this Allium genus.

Thanks for the pie somebody! Big kiss!

It's such a great plant! I tried to squeeze the seeds out, i was hoping for black hard edgy thingies i know from other alliums, but the flowers just turn to dust. I'm going to get a little pot and try it anyway..
The tiniest bulbils and others i'm going to grow out now, bigger ones i'll plant when rains return, i think the bigger ones will survive the drying process. And the small ones will just wither away.
It could just be some clever way of the plant to survive. Smaller ones have a bigger chance of getting moved further from the motherplant because if an animal rushes past the light weight will make for it to tumble further. Who knows? And maybe it could be that the plant flowers so in case it gets really really dry and the bulbs shrivel it might squeeze out a seed or two. But that when it has enough water it just fills up the bulbils and the seeds are an afterthought.
I'm totally theorizing here.

Hi Hugo, sorry for the delay... 😬
🫣

A. x proliferum are sterile.
I have eight accessions, and none have been even partially fertile.

However, you can easily create them, as Allium cepa is mostly self-incompatible.
They have staggered flowering periods, but fistulosum has the particularity of producing inflorescences over a long period after its flowering peak.

And otherwise, there are now sexually fertile Allium x proliferum.
But these don't produce bulbils.

I'll simply copy and paste my Facebook post:

𝐒𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐀𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐮𝐦 𝐱 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐮𝐦:
𝐴𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑢𝑚 𝑥 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑢𝑚 is the name of the hybrid obtained between the cultivated onion (𝐴. 𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑎) and the fistulous onion (𝐴. 𝑓𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑢𝑚).
It is known to gardeners as the Walking Onion.
These natural hybrids are sterile and can be recognized by their bulbiferous inflorescences.

But these are different!
They are sexually fertile hybrids obtained artificially!
_________________________
𝐴𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑢𝑚 𝑓𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑢𝑚 is a very interesting genetic resource for the cultivated onion (𝐴𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑢𝑚 𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑎), both for its resistance to abiotic and biotic stresses: resistance to pink root (𝑃𝑦𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑜𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑒𝑡𝑎 𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑠) and leaf blight (SLB) caused by 𝑆𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑝ℎ𝑦𝑙𝑖𝑢𝑚 𝑣𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑢𝑚, among others.

However, it remained unexploited for a long time due to the sterility of its offspring.
The first hybridization attempts to produce fertile hybrids date back to the 1950s, but it wasn't until the 2000s that the techniques were truly mastered.
Since 2020, some cultivars have become available.

I was able to obtain 10 of them.
A few are intended for mass distribution: private gardeners and small farmers.
But the majority are developed for professionals and are sold in batches ranging from 50g to 1kg of seeds.
Some cultivars are never even mentioned online, and it was only by contacting Argenta Seeds that they were introduced to me.

This collection of 10 lines represents a very significant research effort and a large financial investment.
_________________________
These 10 cultivars were planted simultaneously and in close proximity during the spring of 2024.
They are:

- 𝐕𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲: Developed by Starke Ayres, a South African seed company.

- 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐧 F1: Developed by Tozer Seeds, a UK seed company.

- 𝐆𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐧 F1: Developed by Tozer Seeds, a UK seed company.

- 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐱 (formerly Hi 08 527): Winner of a Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit for its reliability and good performance.

- 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐚: Developed by Argenta Seeds, a Dutch seed company.

- 𝐁𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫: No information.

- 𝐍𝐞𝐲𝐦𝐚𝐫: Developed by Argenta Seeds, a Dutch seed company.

- 𝐒𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐳: Developed by Argenta Seeds, a Dutch seed company.

- 𝐖𝐢𝐧 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫: Developed by Argenta Seeds, a Dutch seed company.

- 𝐑𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐫: Developed by Argenta Seeds, a Dutch seed company.
_________________________
This composite population is designed to be used as a pollen donor for backcrosses with 𝐴. 𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑎 𝑣𝑎𝑟. 𝑎𝑔𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑚.
Therefore, it is desired to be as genotypically heterogeneous as possible, to maximize my chances of obtaining sexually fertile hybrids.

This spring of 2025 was the year of their first flowering!
I'll tell you about the various projects related to it later, so be patient! 😉



... Hope this helped!

Shoot, I read the thread title and had a joke all worked out!

"Can a walking onion make a baby chive? Only if he comes across a willing shallot!" (Ba-dum-bum)

It sort of bombs once you read the thread though.

Great knowledge Joran! Thank you for sharing. Welcome to Permies!
Those Fistulosums look so healthy! I never even seen springonions that healthy. Amazing genetics.
I collected some Fistulosum seed yesterday!
I'll have to prepare a bed especially for what you say, mix Fistulosums with a mix of all the Cepa(onions) i can find.
Then the offspring maybe will have some unique walking onion properties! That's such exciting knowledge to me.
Thank you again Joran, it's heartwarming!

No Hugo,
In the previous photo they are not these aren't fistulosums, but artificially produced, sexually fertile A. cepa x A. fistulosum (A. x proliferum) hybrids!

If you want seeds, I still have several accessions. You can buy them on eBay:
https://www.ebay.fr/sch/i.html?sid=joran-seeds-and-research&_pgn=1&isRefine=true&_trksid=p4429486.m3561.l49496&fbclid=IwY2xjawLHjU1leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETB1WmhBZU9tTTA4MFpvYmJxAR6uh50y_3RSZ1K3se5oUxzjmxhVl82_L261MRCF7ZPyRq0yDxhtz00nFXqgkQ_aem_6B63_ItV0HQc8SKpzVZt0g

I'll make you very generous batches ! I want to propagate these seeds before they get too old! 🙂
Onion seeds don't have a long lifespan.

And some are extremely difficult to obtain, for example, the 'Velocity' cultivar pictured, for which I had to import 1kg of seeds from Johannesburg, South Africa! 😩
💸
🤣🤣🤣
https://www.starkeayres.com/products/commercial-farming-seed/bunching-onion/velocity


And it's very likely that by crossing them back with their parental lines, some of their offspring will be sterile and bulbiferous like classic A. x proliferum.
So maybe you can find your happiness among their descendants! 🤷

Comparison :