Emma Cooper

In previous years, the blooms on my Welsh onions (Allium fistulosum) much loved by bees) have always looked like this:

with the occasional one that did something slightly different:

This year the ones around the edge of one raised bed look the same, but around the second raised bed they are doing something very different:

I took that photo a couple of weeks ago; since then the little bulbs have developed more fully, and they look like walking onions. I was trying to remember whether those onions were, in fact, something different. They are not labelled, and I don’t remember planting them, which means they’ve probably been there for a while and they’re almost certainly Welsh onions – anything more unusual (by my garden’s standards!) I would have labelled; but my recollections of last year’s garden are a little fuzzy.

Then I went to CAT and saw that the plants they labelled as Welsh onions were doing the same thing:

So, the question is – is this a normal growth stage of Welsh onions that I simply haven’t been seen before, or is it something they do occasionally in response to something like the weather? I will certainly have lots of little bulbs to plant out and/ or pass on, but the bees have missed out on half their banquet this year. Does anyone have any thoughts?