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

Sanborn's onion

Allium sanbornii

Sanborn's onion
Photo: DeanWmTaylor, CC BY 2.0

Sanborn's onion (Allium sanbornii) is a wild North American species of onion from northern California and southwestern Oregon, grown mainly by native plant enthusiasts. It thrives in sunny, well-drained serpentine-type soils, and the key to growing it is to mimic its dry-summer, gritty habitat.

Family
Amaryllidaceae (Daffodil & onion family)
Grows as
Bulb
Light
Full sun
Water
Water moderately during the spring growing season and keep nearly dry in summer while the plant is dormant.
Soil
Gritty, fast-draining mix, ideally with some serpentine or mineral character.
Temperature
Hardy in cool temperate climates; protect bulbs from prolonged waterlogging in winter.
How easy
Moderate
Edible
Yes, some parts
Native range
SW. Oregon to C. California
Climate
temperate

About

Allium sanbornii is a North American species of wild onion known by the common name Sanborn's onion. It is native to northern California and southwestern Oregon. It grows in the serpentine soils of the southern Cascade Range and northern Sierra Nevada foothills.

Allium sanbornii produces a reddish-brown bulb up to about 2.5 cm (1 in) long. Scape up to 60 cm (24 in) long, bearing a single cylindrical leaf which is about the same length. The umbel contains as many as 150 small flowers, each with tepals less than a centimeter long, pink to white with darker red midveins. Anthers are 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 sanbornii 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…