I shall have to look out for this one! Thanks for the info Jim. > Message du 05/02/09 15:33 > De : "Jim McKenney" > A : "'Pacific Bulb Society'" > Copie à : > Objet : [pbs] culinary onion notes > > > Winters here in zone 7 Maryland can be very cold, but they are also very > bright; and while there is not much blooming in the garden, the stack of > seed catalogs I have is in full bloom. > > I depend on these seed catalogs to keep me up to date with the sometimes > unfamiliar items I see in the grocery store (the ever expanding range of > Asian greens in particular). Now that Ive typed that word grocery I should > point out that I dont shop at what are literally grocery stores; I shop at > typical food stores. The true grocery store almost became extinct, but > exists now in the guise of those buying clubs that sell everything in > month-size units. > > The better seed catalogs also often give me a heads-up on changes in > nomenclature. This week Ive had a thing for onions. We eat a lot of onions > here. The interrelationships of the culinary onions are still being worked > out, and its an intriguing story. > > > Shallots, which were generally called Allium ascalonicum when I was a kid, > then they went into a phase where they were called Allium cepa Aggregatum > Group or something like that. Now there seems to be a trend among some to > treat them as A. cepa variants and let it go at that. Because many of what > are sold as shallots now are of hybrid origin (hybrid in the sense onion x > shallot), maybe this makes sense. > > I was reading the Rix and Phillips Random House Book of Vegetables where I > encountered the name Allium oschaninii in a list of wild Allium which might > have contributed to the ancestry of the cultivated Allium cepa (itself > unknown as a wild plant). > > Later I checked out the wikipedia account of shallot and was very surprised > to find this: the author of that account assigns the French gray shallot > (but not other shallots) to Allium oschaninii. Those who know their onions > have long praised the French gray as the best of the shallots. > > > Jim McKenney > jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com > Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone > 7, where it's cold and the temperature will probably not go above freezing > today: early snowdrops are hunkered down. > My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ > BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ > > Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS > Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ > > Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/ > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ > >