Seed Grown Walking Onions

For the past few years, I have been growing topset onions (also known as Egyptian onions, walking onions, tree onions, and more). The plants normally produce many marble sized onions instead of flowers. These bulbils are really easy to grow, as they often have roots forming before they even hit the ground. I was curious as to what would happen when the plants were grown from seed instead of the bulbils. I had no idea what would happen, or if the seeds were even fertile.

Last years bulbils on walking onions

 Two years ago, I scoured my row of plants and found some plants with flowers along with bulbils. The onions do not regularly make seed, so there may be a chance of male sterility, so I made sure to leave the normal green onions close by as a possible pollen donor. Some people recommend removing bulbils for seed on garlic, but I kept mine on because of laziness. When the flowers dried down a bit, I looked for seeds. Luckily, I found a few and now have two mature plants grown from seed. Last year they looked like ordinary green onions, but now I can see what they really are.

 These are the two plants grown from seed! The one on the right has two big flower balls and one small one. The plant on the left is smaller, a bit twisted, and has one small flower sack.  I am actually quite amazed at what happened after growing them from seed. At a glance, the plants are noticeably different from their parents.

These are the two main flower whorls on the right plant. I am really impressed by how quickly the plant regained flower production. On last years onions, there were only a few plants with more than a dozen flowers, and these two are completely bulbil free. (as far as I can tell)








This scape is also part of the right plant, and it is noticeably different from the others. I gently squeezed the flower case to see what was inside, and there are bulbils forming too. This plant has not completely reverted back to flowering!

The left plant is more unusual. The scape formed inside of a leaf. The best way to describe it is like putting a stick through a straw. I have no idea why this happened. The flower case also contains bulbils so seems to be just like it's parent plant.

These are the parent walking onions as of today

Based on a comparison to the parent plants, I would say that the seed grown plants are quite different from the parents. All that is left to do now is grow out more seeds from the seed-grown plants and see what happens again!