Allium ampeloprasum is a member of the onion genus Allium. The wild plant is commonly known as wild leek or broadleaf wild leek. Its native range includes southern Europe, southwestern Asia and North Africa, but it has been cultivated and naturalized in many other countries.
Allium ampeloprasum has been differentiated into five cultivated vegetables: leek, elephant garlic, pearl onion, kurrat, and Persian leek.
Description
Wild populations produce bulbs up to 3 centimetres (1+1⁄4 inches) across. Scapes are round in cross-section, each up to 180cm (71in) tall, bearing an umbel of as many as 500 flowers. Flowers are urn-shaped, up to 6 millimetres (1⁄4 inch) across; tepals white, pink or red; anthers yellow or purple; pollen yellow.[2][3]
Distribution and habitat
The plant's native range is southern Europe to southwestern Asia and North Africa,[4] including all countries bordering the Black, Adriatic, and Mediterranean Seas from Portugal to Egypt to Romania. In Russia and Ukraine, it is considered invasive except in Crimea, where it is native. It is also native to Ethiopia, Uzbekistan, Iran and Iraq.
The species may have been introduced to Britain by prehistoric people, where its habitat consists of rocky places near the coast in south-west England and Wales.[8][9]
Kurrat (var. kurrat),[8][12] Egyptian leek or salad leek. This variety has small bulbs, and primarily the leaves are eaten.
Persian leek (A. ampeloprasum ssp. persicum). A cultivated allium native to the Middle East and Iran, grown for culinary purposes and called tareh in Persian. The linear green leaves have a mild onion flavor and are eaten raw, either alone, or in food combinations.[13]
Some sources (especially archeological ones) refer to each of these as a separate species,[14] but they are now united as A.ampeloprasum.
In culture
The plant is mentioned as shaḥm el-arḍ in an 11th-century Mishnah commentary.[15]
↑ Gleason, H. A. & A.J. Cronquist. 1991. Manual of the Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada (ed. 2) i–910. New York Botanical Garden, Bronx.
↑ Kartesz, John T. (2014). "Alliumampeloprasum". County-level distribution map from the North American Plant Atlas (NAPA). Biota of North America Program (BONAP).
↑ CHRISTOPHER D. PRESTON, DAVID A. PEARMAN, ALLAN R. HALL (2004) Archaeophytes in Britain Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 145 (3), 257–294 doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.2004.00284.x, p. 264
↑ Shmida, Avi (2005). MAPA's Dictionary of Plants and Flowers in Israel (in Hebrew). Tel-Aviv: MAPA. p.237. OCLC716569354.
↑ Mousavi, Amir; Kashi, Abedolkarim; Davoodi, Daryoush; Shariatpanahi, Mohammad Sanei (2006). "Characterization of an Allium Cultivated in Iran: The Persian Leek". Belgian Journal of Botany. 139 (1): 115–123. JSTOR20794599.
↑ Zohary, Daniel; Hopf, Maria; Weiss, Ehud (2012). Domestication of plants in the Old World: the origin and spread of domesticated plants in Southwest Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean Basin (4thed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.195. ISBN9780199549061. The more robust varieties grown for their thick 'pseudostem' (A. porrum L. senu stricto) and the slender leafy forms (sometimes referred to as A. kurrat Schweinf.), are all closely related to, and inter-fertile with, the wild and weedy tetraploid forms of wild Allium ampeloprasum L., which is widely distributed in the Mediterranean basin.
↑ Nathan ben Abraham (1955), "Perush Shishah Sidrei Mishnah – A Commentary on the Six Orders of the Mishnah", in Sachs, Mordecai Yehudah Leib (ed.), The Six Orders of the Mishnah: with the Commentaries of the Rishonim (in Hebrew), vol.1, Jerusalem: El ha-Meqorot, p.s.v. Sheviit, ch. 7, OCLC233403923
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
