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Bulbs usually clustered, ovoid-cylindric, 0.5--1 cm in diam.; tunic grayish brown or tinged with yellow, papery, laciniate, sometimes fibrous at apex. Leaves 1 or 2, slightly shorter than scape, 2--6 mm wide, terete, fistulose, smooth or scabrous-denticulate. Scape 10--40(--60) cm, terete, covered with leaf sheaths for 1/3--1/2 its length, smooth or scabrous-denticulate. Spathe 2-valved, purple-red, persistent. Umbel subglobose, densely many flowered. Pedicels usually unequal, shorter than perianth, ebracteolate. Perianth purple-red to pale red; segments lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate to oblong, equal, 7--11(--17) × 3--4 mm, apex acute or acuminate. Filaments 1/3--1/2(--2/3) as long as perianth segments, connate at base and adnate to perianth segments for 1--1.5 mm; inner ones with triangular base, ca. 1/2 as wide as outer. Ovary subglobose, with concave nectaries at base. Style not exserted. Fl. and fr. Jul--Sep.
Bulb slender, often scarcely thicker than the stem; lvs erect, terete, hollow, mostly cauline, 2–4 mm thick, the longest nearly equaling the stout, 2–5 dm stem; umbel compact, hemispheric, subtended by 2 ovate bracts; pedicels 3–7 mm; fls numerous; tep bright pink, ovate to lanceolate, 10–14 mm, acuminate, prominently 1-nerved; filaments all about alike, barely widened at base; fr ovoid, 3-lobed, half as long as the perianth; 2n=16, 24, 32. Circumboreal, in Amer. s. to Me., n. N.Y., n. Mich., Minn., Colo., and Wash. June, July. Our native plants, as described above, are var. sibiricum (L.) Hartman. Var. schoenoprasum, a much smaller European plant only 1–2 dm, with the lvs basal and only 1–2 mm thick, is the cult. chives; it rarely escapes in our range.
An onion family plant. It is a herb which grows one year, then flowers the next. It is up to 30 cm tall. A narrow leafed onion which forms dense clumps. The leaves are hollow and narrow. They are 10-25 cm long by 0.1 cm in cross section. They are angular in cross section. Bulbs are not well developed. They can be 1-3 cm long by 0.5-1.5 cm across. The flowers are pink or purple. They are produced in a head where small flowers are on equal length stalks forming a rounded head.
Bulbs gregarious, indistinct, oblong to narrowly ovoid, 1-3 cm long, gradually passing into scape and leaves, several set on a rhizome. Increase bulbs few to several, narrow and inconspicuous. Protective bulbcoat-leaves several, papery, smooth, brownish. Foliage leaves 3-6, erect, terete, fistulose, 10-50 cm by 1—5(—7) mm. Inflorescence (hemi)spherical. Flowers narrowly urceolate; tepals white to purple; stamens much shorter than tepals.
