New wild onion variety documented in Pennsylvania
A second species of the wild onions known as ramps or leeks has officially been documented in Pennsylvania, and it has a stronger odor than other varieties.
Penn State researchers have scientifically documented a second type of ramp, commonly known in other parts of the country as narrow-leaved wild leek.
Across Pennsylvania, the common ramp has wide leaves and is collected by those who like an aroma and flavor that’s a mix between garlic and onions.
While Penn State has just announced the official documentation of the narrow-leaved variety, it’s likely been living in Pennsylvania a long time, according to team leader Eric Burkhart, associate teaching professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management.
Burkhart, along with Cassie Stark and Sarah Nilson, officially documented their findings this year in a research paper.
“We are evaluating now what we believe to be a second species. We are trying to confirm through traditional tools like common garden experiments and genetics to see how distinctive it is,” he said.
While common ramps have a strong garlic and onion smell and flavor, the narrow-leaved variety has a stronger odor.
“You can taste and smell the difference between the two species,” Burkhart said. The narrow-leaved variety has a “skunkier smell,” he said meaning it has more of a sulfurous smell before being cooked.
They also discovered narrow-leaved ramps flower in June while traditional ramps bloom in July. If there’s an overlap of the flowering timetable there’s potential for hybrid varieties of the ramps.
Nilson, assistant professor of biology at Penn State Beaver, located the first verified population in the state in spring 2020 near Pittsburgh. “A lot of it was luck I think,” she said about finding it in an area where botanists have extensively studied in the past.
She said they had help from the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which reported some odd-looking ramps. “It was a known species, we just didn’t know it was in Pennsylvania,” Nilson said about the plant, which has been found in Ohio and West Virginia. “We found it, and that’s exciting.”
The research is continuing, in addition to studying all ramps across the state. “There could potentially be more species of ramps. We don’t know. There’s some evidence for that, but we’re doing a larger regional study of ramp diversity to see if there could be other species of ramps out there as well,” Nilson said.
Burkhart said, “We think at one time there was probably a much more widespread and perhaps contiguous population of the slow-growing perennial plant that occurred throughout western Pennsylvania into the Midwest. But now, Allium burdickii“— narrowleaved ramp — “seems to be found only in isolated populations in increasingly urban areas outside Pittsburgh. We are working to figure out areas where it occurs so that hopefully we can conserve what’s left.”
They are only aware of it growing in 15 places in Pennsylvania with a limited range in Westmoreland, Washington, Greene and Allegheny counties.
“We are trying to build some awareness, especially in that part of the state on private lands because we actually believe that this species is much more abundant than is otherwise indicated. The habitat seems to be plentiful in that part of the state,” Burkhart said.
The two types of ramps can blend together, which can lead to confusion over what the average person is looking at, and they can be confused with grass plants. “A lot of people we feel like, ourselves included, have literally walked by the plant in many cases,” he said.
“This burdickii species has been confused for about 100 years. Is it a sedge, is it a grass, is it a different form of the more traditional Allium tricoccum?” he said. Now they know it’s a distinct species in looking at the chemistry, genetics and habitat.
The team is looking for additional funding to continue their research in new areas. “It’s probably going to be found up through maybe even Lake Erie, because it’s certainly found on the Lake Erie shorelines, or proximate to it, in the Ohio area, like around Cleveland,” he said.
The other goal is to understand the species better to see if it’s something they want to grow or manage on forest lands. Burkhart said there may be an economic development component to having a specialty plant available for people to grow and manage.
Burkhart, who is also the director of the Appalachian Botany and Ethnobotany Program at the Penn State Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center, is looking to educate the public about the two varieties. “Because of development in the region, and the high demand for ramps, we need to educate the public about the need to recognize and conserve them.”
He has a team of people working with ramps since 2016 in a broad sense trying to understand different aspects of how this trade operates and what’s in them. The team works with food science colleagues and others are studying medicinal benefits of ramps.
“Ramps, in recent years, let’s say within the last decade or so, have become a very trendy and popular food item in the eastern United States.”
They are now looking at where ramps grow. “The goal is to help landowners identify where ramps grow on properties that they can monitor, manage, harvest and whatever their goals are for ramps on their properties,” Burkhart said.
He also wants to provide more information on forest farming with plants like ramps that are in demand. “Ramps are another crop like ginseng that people are interested in and are growing in forest land,” he said.
He encourages people to be open to finding new things in the wild.
“People just spending time in the woods and being observant, yields new insightful scientific discoveries almost every year,” Burkhart said. “There’s still discoveries being made. We don’t know everything that’s found and grows in Pennsylvania. We’re still finding new species all the time. This is one example.”
Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website’s homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors ,Twitter @whipkeyoutdoors and Instagram at whipkeyoutdoors.