Daffodil garlic

Allium neapolitanum, the daffodil garlic or Naples garlic, is a small bulbous perennial herb of the Amaryllidaceae family, growing to about 30 cm tall from a rounded bulb up to 2 cm across. The basal leaves are flat, linear and grass-like, appearing in autumn and persisting through winter and spring before dying back in early summer. A slender, erect flowering scape rises above the foliage in spring carrying a loose umbel of up to about twenty-five pure white, star-shaped flowers, each tepal with a fine green or pale yellow midvein and the cluster centred with prominent yellow stamens. Unlike many cultivated alliums the flowers have only a mild scent and a clean, ornamental appearance. The species is native to the Mediterranean basin from Portugal east to the Levant and across North Africa, growing on rocky hillsides, olive groves and field margins; it has naturalised widely in California, the Gulf states, Australia and New Zealand.