ABSTRACT
Chives Allium schoenoprasum L. are used in many dishes. Only the leaves are eaten, the bulbs being too small. In many domestic gardens, perennial plants are kept for food or as ornamentals. Small bundles of chives, harvested from perennial fields or forced in greenhouses, provide a year-round supply. Taxonomic relationships of chives have been studied using cytological and molecular biological methods as well as chemical composition and morphological characteristics. The study of organic sulfur compounds in chives and other alliums led to the isolation of a number of new cysteine derivatives. A growth inhibitor resembling abcisic acid can be extracted from intact, dormant chive bulbs. Chives are grown commercially for forcing, for processing, and for seed production. J. P. McCollum, in 1935, first showed that dormant chives could be induced to grow following a heat treatment. Chives, like all other cultivated Allium species, live in symbiosis with mycorrhizal fungi.
