CHIVES

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Talking about chives is like expounding on your favorite blue jeans. They become such a part of your life that you seldom notice them or take time to analyze their virtues. I’ve probably had the same trusty chive plants for twenty years, and most of my family, friends, and landscaping clients now have offspring from them. I pay attention to my chives only occasionally, when I cut them back or dig up a portion to give to a friend or clip a few leaves for something I’m cooking for dinner.

Even in the kitchen, chives seldom get star billing—I make no chive pestos or pizzas, for example—but like my jeans, they go with everything. I pair chives with basil, rosemary, thyme, fennel, dill, tarragon, and a host of other herbs, and they go with so many other foods, too—just about any savory dish I can think of.

The chives I’m referring to are the common, easy-to-grow perennial herb we all know so well, the one whose minced foliage the waiter offers you to top your baked potato—Allium schoenoprasum. The slender, tubular, vivid green rushlike leaves inspired the species name, schoenoprasum, which is derived from Greek roots for “rush” and “leek”. The plants grow in dense clumps that spread quickly, sometimes to a foot across. The leaves emerge in early spring from slender bulbs clustered on a rhizome and grow 12 to 18 inches tall—followed in early summer by globe-shaped lavender or pink flower heads.

Botanists have assigned the genus ­Allium variously to the lily family (Liliaceae), the amaryllis family (Ama­ryllidaceae), and its own family, the ­Alliaceae. The genus also includes onions and garlic.

Chives are native to northern regions of Europe, Asia, and North America. In North America, these adaptable plants can be grown from southern Canada (Zone 3) south to the Gulf Coast and west to Southern California (Zone 10). Records show that cooks have valued chives for at least 5,000 years.

In addition to seeds and plants of common chives, some herb nurseries offer several cultivars. They include the compact ‘Dwarf’, which is somewhat shorter than common chives, and the even more compact German cultivar ‘Schnittlauch’ (that’s “chive” in German). Pink-flowered cultivars include ‘Forescate’ (also known as ‘Forsgate’) and ‘Grolau’. If you are growing chives indoors, you may want to try two cultivars bred for greenhouse growing: broad-leaved ‘Grolau’ and the trademarked Profusion (A. s. ‘Sterile’), whose numerous flowers remain tender longer than those of other cultivars because they do not set seed.

The taste of garlic

Another type of chives that I wouldn’t want to be without are called garlic chives, Oriental chives, or Chinese chives (A. tuberosum). They are prized for their onion-garlic flavor. Garlic chives have flat, dark green leaves that may grow 2 feet tall and clusters of white starry flowers on stiff stems in late summer. A mauve-flowered form is also available. The sweetly scented flowers attract bees and other beneficial insects. Both the fresh flowers and the dried seed heads are attractive in flower arrangements.