Allium hookeri ACE 2430

Hooker’s Onion Amaryllidaceae

A choice wild collection of Hooker’s Onion, and a rather splendid example of how an edible vegetable can also make an excellent garden plant. ACE 2430 forms a robust clump of broad, flat green leaves, with upright stems carrying rounded heads of starry, creamy-white to greenish-yellow flowers. The flowers have a pleasing drumstick-like appearance and are produced over a notably long season, extending well into autumn.

Collection: ACE 2430, collected during the Alpine Garden Society China Expedition from the Cangshan Mountains, Yunnan, China, at approximately 3,500 m elevation. The Cangshan range rises to over 4,000 m, so this is a genuinely high-altitude provenance rather than a plant merely given an exotic address for marketing purposes. The ACE collection is particularly interesting for its combination of rugged mountain provenance and excellent garden performance. 

The species itself has a wide Himalayan distribution, occurring in Nepal, Bhutan, northern India, south-western China and parts of the eastern Himalaya, generally between about 1,500 and 4,000 m, in moist mountain grassland, slopes and woodland margins. 

Edible: A genuinely useful perennial vegetable. The young leaves, bulbs or fleshy underground parts and flowers can all be eaten, raw or cooked. The leaves make an excellent mild onion substitute and can be harvested repeatedly without destroying the plant. The flowers are also edible and make an attractive garnish. In parts of South Asia and China, A. hookeri has long been cultivated or gathered as a food and flavouring plant. 

It is particularly valuable as an ornamental because it flowers for an unusually long period, with flowering potentially continuing from summer well into autumn. The species is also highly attractive to bees and other insects. However, it is worth distinguishing ACE 2430 from the especially floriferous ‘Zorami’, which is noted for repeat flowering from June into October; ACE 2430 is an excellent flowering form in its own right, but should not automatically inherit ‘Zorami’s’ flowering credentials. 

Height: 30–45 cm
Spread: 30–45 cm
Flowers: July–October
Hardiness: Fully hardy in Britain

Best grown in full sun or light shade in a moderately fertile, moisture-retentive but well-drained soil. It is remarkably unfussy and, despite its Himalayan provenance, is perfectly at home in an ordinary British kitchen garden or sunny herbaceous border.

A superb dual-purpose plant — ornamental enough for the flower border and edible enough for the vegetable garden. And with a collection number, a 3,500-metre Himalayan pedigree and flowers that keep appearing long after many other alliums have packed their bags for the season, it has rather more going for it than your average onion. One could almost say it has reached new heights.