[Image description: a perfectly round peeled bulb of garlic on a cutting board, with unpeeled normal cloves behind it.]

  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    That’s not done yet. Garlic looks like this when it hasn’t ‘split’ into the clove parts yet. This will be bland and only have a mild flavor.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        So you’ve got two modes of reproduction with Allium. Allium like this typically follows a biennial habit, so this years garlic will split into cloves around the fall, in preparation for sending up a flowering stalk next spring/ summer. The cloves are vegetative propagules; just another way to get more garlic other than seeds. Hence you can just plant a clove and get a garlic next year, or, you can plant seed and also get garlic.

        Now for your actually question, I believe the segmentation is probably exogenous, technically yes, however, I am by no means an expert in Allium morphology (although I have done graduate coarse work in plant morph, and worked in a plant morph lab), so don’t quote me. However, it wouldn’t appear like you are describing. Think of the ring at the base of a clove of garlic as a bunch of ‘stems’. The branching would originate there.

    • stoy@lemmy.zip
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      4 months ago

      Here is another mildy interesting fact, in Swedish we group onions and garlic together by using the word “lök” with a color and different spacing to differentiate them:

      “lök” - onion

      “gul lök” - onion or yellow onion

      “rödlök” - red onion

      “vitlök” - garlic

      We never talk about “vit lök”, it doesn’t really exist as a concept in Swedish, but we have more types of “lök”…

      “gräslök” directly translates to “grass onion”, but the proper translation is “chives”

      “prujolök” is the Swedish name for “leek”

      • Skua@kbin.earth
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        4 months ago

        Garlic, onions, chives, and leeks (plus shallots, spring onions / scallions, and ramsons) are actually very closely related, being part of the same allium genus. That’s the same level of closeness as dogs to wolves, for example

      • mommykink@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        i love swedish. i drive an old volvo every day and frequently end up on weird SE-language forums as a result.

          • viking@infosec.pub
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            4 months ago

            Yes, hvitløk = vitlök in Swedish. It’s the same word really (the h is silent), and ø (Norwegian, Danish) = ö (Swedish, Finnish, German).

            • stoy@lemmy.zip
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              4 months ago

              Ah, I think you missed the spacing when I said that “vit lök” wasn’t a thing in Swedish, “vitlök” is as you say “garlic”, and is a common word

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        We never talk about “vit lök”, it doesn’t really exist as a concept in Swedish,

        Do you mean to say there isn’t garlic in Sweden??

  • Dojan@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    There’s a particular variety of Chinese garlic that grows as a singular bulb. It originates in the Yunnan province, I think. I remember my mother growing it back when I was a child. It’s really nice!

  • rjthyen@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but a garlic plant grows some form of a “seed” head, that will have miniature round bulbs in it if they aren’t clipped off that, it’s my understanding, when they are planted they’ll grow like this in the first year and into a normal garlic bulb year two. I’ve never experimented enough to know if I’m correct, but if my info is correct I’d guess either one of those got mixed in by mistake, or if your planting in the same spot as the year prior one might’ve just fallen off.