Rosy garlic

Allium roseum is a bulbous perennial herb of the Amaryllidaceae family growing 20-65 cm tall from a solitary ovoid bulb 1.5-3 cm in diameter, often clothed in a smooth or finely reticulate brownish tunic and frequently surrounded by numerous small subglobose bulblets. The scape is solitary, erect, slender, terete and smooth. Two to four basal leaves arise at the bulb, are flat or slightly channelled, linear, 15-30 cm long and 4-12 mm wide, smooth-margined and somewhat glaucous-green, withering by anthesis. The terminal inflorescence is a hemispherical to loosely globose umbel 4-7 cm across, subtended by two papery deciduous spathe valves, bearing 15-40 stellate flowers on slender pedicels 1-3 cm long; bulbils are absent in the typical form. The six tepals are clear pink to pale rose (rarely white), elliptic-oblong, 7-12 mm long with a darker midvein and a blunt to slightly recurved tip. Stamens are six, shorter than the tepals, with simple filaments and yellow anthers; the ovary is three-locular. The fruit is a small obtusely three-angled capsule containing black angular seeds. Native to the Mediterranean basin from Portugal and Morocco east to Turkey, on dry rocky slopes, fallow fields and olive groves.