Allium cernuum
species of plant
Allium cernuum, known as nodding onion or lady's leek, is a perennial plant in the genus Allium. It grows in open areas in North America.
Description
Allium cernuum is a herbaceous perennial growing from an unsheathed elongated conical bulb which gradually tapers directly into several keeled (thin and flat) grass-like leaves, 2–4 millimetres (3⁄32–5⁄32 inch) in width. Each mature bulb bears a single flowering stem, which terminates in a downward nodding umbel of white or rose, campanulate (bell-shaped) flowers that bloom in July and August. The flowers are arranged into downward facing umbels and each flower is about 5 mm (3⁄16 in) across, pink or white with yellow pollen and yellow anthers. A. cernuum does not have bulblets in the inflorescence. The flowers mature into spherical crested fruits which later split open to reveal the dark shiny seeds.
Similar species
In addition to other species of Allium, wild garlic, field garlic, and wild leek look similar, as well as other onion-looking poisonous species, such as deathcamas, which lacks the expected onion odor.
Distribution and habitat
The species has been reported from much of the United States, Canada and Mexico including in the Appalachian Mountains from Alabama to New York State, the Great Lakes Region, the Ohio and Tennessee River Valleys, the Ozarks of Arkansas and Missouri, and the Rocky and Cascade Mountains of the West, from Mexico to Washington. It has not been reported from California, Nevada, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Delaware, New England, or much of the Great Plains.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Allium cernuum” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10641333. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Current terminology should not be projected backward without checking the classification used when the underlying evidence was created. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Allium cernuum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.