Leek

The leek is a cultivated form of Allium ampeloprasum, a member of the onion genus whose wild plant, the wild or broadleaf wild leek, is native from southern Europe through south-western Asia to North Africa and has naturalised in many other countries. The common leek, sometimes ranked as the variety porrum, is known by its stout false stem, and the same species has given rise to elephant garlic, the pearl onion, kurrat and Persian leek. Wild plants form small bulbs and send up round flowering stalks as tall as 1.8 metres, each crowned by an umbel of up to five hundred small, urn-shaped flowers in white, pink or red. In Britain the wild plant grows in rocky places near the coast of south-west England and Wales, where prehistoric people may have brought it. Its species name joins the Greek words for vine and leek. In magical lore, when two people eat leeks they are said to fall in love with each other; leeks are also carried as protective amulets, and bitten to break hexes and drive evil away.