Edible Weeds: Three Cornered Garlic (Allium triquetrum)

In late Winter, in moister places along creeks, in parks and on roadside verges, little snowflakes begin to show themselves.

'Little Snowflakes'? What ever am I carrying on about? The beautiful flowers of the Three Cornered Garlic plant (Allium triquetrum) that’s what.

Clumps of three Cornered Garlic appear in moist places


I’m lucky that for this post, our FB friend , Crystal lwas kind enough to send me some pics so that I could get this post done and this delicious herb onto your plates. Thanks Crystal for supplying the first three pics for this page

Three Cornered Garlic has many names, all alluding to the Three cornered leaves and the garlicky nature of its odour. The most common are 'Three Cornered Garlic' and 'Three Cornered Leek'.

Clusters of flowers with a green line on each petal


While there’s not a lot of info about Three Cornered Garlic’s use as a herbal remedy, I assume that because it’s in the Onion family (Alliaceae), and has the characteristic smell of that family, it is chock full of sulphur compounds.

These compounds not only give this family their smell, but their reputation as system cleaners, digestive tonics and lowerers of cholesterol. I love onions and their kin and recommend they be included in everybody’s diets.

To cook with it, you can use the small bulbs that form, and can be harvested in summer when, true to its family, 3 Cornered Garlic’s leaves die back. but why wait? Just snip off a few leaves and add them to your meal. My favourite way to eat them is raw with cheese, some folks recommend lightly frying them, but I can’t wait that long!

The long, soft, leaves have a supporting rib


To identify them, look for lots of pretty white flowers and soft, fat, quite floppy, grass-like leaves. The flowers are white and have a distinctive green line in the middle of each petal.

If you pick a leaf and look at it in cross section, it will be clear where both the common and botanic names come from for there are three clear corners in the cross section.

Cut a leaf and look at the midsection, you can see the 3 distinct corners that give this plant its names

This is #originalwork. The pics were taken by yours truly.

There is an index of Edible Weeds posts that I've done here on Steemit.

Find out more about edible weeds on our blog, Ligaya.

We also have a YouTube channel and a Patreon page that you might like to visit.

This article is in the

We're also members of the Homesteadersonline community. Click the image for the invite link to join us

Earn with @minnowbooster. Click the pic to sign up -