Flowering Allium victorialis at Ringve in June 2025

This video shows a selection of Allium victorialis complex accessions in the Onion Garden Chicago at the Ringve Botanical Garden in Trondheim, Norway on 15th June 2025. In the 2015 paper "Allium L. subgenus Anguinum" by Herden, Hanelt and Friesen a detailed description and key to all species in the subgenus are given. What was previously Allium victorialis is nowadays split into 4 species; a) Allium victorialis from the mountains of Southern Europe; b) Allium microdictyon (Russia and the Caucasus), Allium ochotense (the Far East) and, split, from the latter , Allium ulleungense. A very good case for splitting the latter and describing this new endemic species to the island Ulleung between Korea and Japan is given in Hyeok-Jae Choi, Sungyu Yang, Jong-Cheol Yang and Nikolai Friesen (2019). The paper also mentions that the species is “Rare in natural habitats, but widely cultivated in Korea as an edible plant named ‘Myeong-i-na-mul’ or ‘Sanmaneul.’” Reference: “Allium ulleungense (Amaryllidaceae), a new species endemic to Ulleungdo Island, Korea”. A cultivated form in the onion garden at Ringve, originating in Japan, may well be this species. The pinkish inflorescences of the Asiatic accessions is clearly seen in this video. The accession from the Kola peninsula is most likely microdictyon, and is considerably earlier than all other accessions in the onion garden, already fruiting in this video. Other members of the subgenus grown in Trondheim include Chinese Allium ovalifolium and North American ramps (Allium tricoccum). We have, sadly, once again lost Allium prattii, although we still have a probably hybrid with that species.