Garlic chives, also known as Chinese chives, Chinese leek, Ku chai or Nira is a relatively new vegetable in the English-speaking world. The plant has a distinctive growth habit with strap-shaped leaves unlike either onion or garlic and straight thin white-flowering stalks that are much taller than the leaves.

It grows in slowly expanding perennial clumps, but also readily sprouts from seed. It is not only an interesting vegetable, but a very attractive flower. The cultivated form is Allium tuberosum while the wild form is placed as A. ramosum. Older references list it as A. odorum but that is now considered a synonym of A. ramosum. Some botanists would place both wild and cultivated forms in A. ramosum since many intermediate forms exist.

The flavor of garlic chives is rather more like garlic than chives, though much milder. They are used as a flavoring similarly to chives, green onions or garlic and are used as a stir fry ingredient. In China, they are often blanched by covering them in the spring. The flowers may also be used as a spice.

External links

• Evolution, Domestication and Taxonomy of Allium (PDF)