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

Purple Flower Garlic

Allium rotundum

Also called Sand Leek

Purple Flower Garlic
Photo: Bernd Haynold, CC BY-SA 3.0

Allium rotundum, the round-headed leek or purple-flowered garlic, is a bulbous wild onion from Eurasia and North Africa that forms clumps and round purple flower heads. It is a hardy garden and roadside-type plant that thrives in full sun and well-drained soil.

Family
Amaryllidaceae (Daffodil & onion family)
Grows as
Bulb
Light
Full sun
Water
Water moderately in spring while leaves are growing, then keep dry while dormant in summer.
Soil
Well-drained soil, sandy or loamy.
Temperature
Hardy to around -20 °C in dormancy; grows well in temperate conditions.
How easy
Easy
Edible
Yes, some parts
Native range
C. Europe to NW. Iran, Morocco
Climate
temperate

About

Allium rotundum, common name round-headed leek or purple-flowered garlic, is a Eurasian and North African species of wild onion. Its native range extends from Spain and Morocco to Iran and European Russia. It is sparingly naturalized in parts of the United States (Michigan and Iowa). The species grows in disturbed habitats such as roadsides, cultivated fields, etc.

Allium rotundum produces large clumps of as many as 50 egg-shaped bulbs, each up to 1.5 cm long. Leaves are up to 40 cm long. Scapes are up to 90 cm tall. Umbels look round from a distance, and can contain as many as 200 flowers. Flowers are bell-shaped, up to 7 mm across; tepals purple, sometimes with white margins; anthers yellow or purple; pollen yellow or white.

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 rotundum 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…