Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Parish's onion

Allium parishii

Parish's onion
Photo: Julia Lynam, NPS, Public domain

Parish's onion (Allium parishii) is an uncommon wild onion of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts, growing from a small bulb on dry, rocky slopes. It is a bulbous geophyte best grown in full sun with very sharp drainage and minimal summer water.

Family
Amaryllidaceae (Daffodil & onion family)
Grows as
Bulb
Light
Full sun
Water
Water sparingly while in active growth in cool months and let the soil dry out completely in summer dormancy.
Soil
Very well-drained gritty or sandy mix with rocky grit.
Temperature
Tolerates hot desert summers and cool winters; protect from prolonged frost below about -5 °C.
How easy
Moderate
Edible
Yes, some parts
Native range
SE. California to W. Arizona
Climate
temperate

About

Allium parishii is an uncommon species of wild onion known by the common name Parish's onion. It is native to the Mojave Desert and Sonoran Deserts of California (San Bernardino, Riverside, and San Diego Counties) and Arizona (Yuma and Mohave Counties). It grows on open dry, rocky slopes at elevations of 900–1,400 m (3,000–4,600 ft).

Allium parishii grows from a reddish-brown bulb just over a centimeter long and produces a scape up to about 25 centimeters tall. There is a single cylindrical leaf which is generally longer than the stem. The umbel contains up to 25 dark-veined pale pink flowers with narrow tepals between one and two centimeters long. Anthers and pollen are yellow.

Other Allium plants

South Idaho onion · Abrams' allium · Allium aciphyllum · Tapertip onion · Allium aeginiense · Allium aflatunense · Allium agrigentinum · Allium alabasicum · Allium albotunicatum · Allium alibile · Altai Onion · Allium altissimum

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Allium parishii by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…