Chive

Chive, or CIVE (Allium schoenoprasum), a plant of the same genus with the leek and onion (see ALLIUM), a perennial, $\backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}$ to 1 foot in height, with very small, flat, clustered bulbs, increasing by its bulbs so as to form dense tufts. The leaves are tubular, cylindrical-tapering, radical, nearly as long as the almost leafless flowering-stem, which is terminated by a hemispherical, many-flowered, not bulbiferous umbel of bluish red, or, more rarely, flesh-coloured flowers. The stamens are included within the perianth. This rather pretty little plant grows wild on the banks of rivers, in marshy or occasionally flooded places, and in rocky pastures in the middle latitudes of Europe and Asia, as also in the far north of North America. It is a rare native of Britain, being only recorded with certainty from some localities in Cornwall and Northumberland. In some of the mountainous districts of Europe a variety is found, larger and stronger in all its parts, and with flowering-stems more leafy. Chives—the name is generally used in the plural—are commonly cultivated in kitchen-gardens, often as an edging for plots, and are used for flavouring soups and dishes, and in salads. Their properties are very similar to those of the onion. The part used is the young leaves, which bear repeated cuttings in the season. The bulbs also are by some used in preference to onions for pickling, their flavour being considered more delicate. For this purpose the clumps of bulbs are broken up in autumn or early winter, and planted in well-manured ground, in lines four or five inches apart, but standing almost close in line. In this way they become larger and more succulent by the following autumn, when they are lifted for use, the largest only being taken, and the smaller replanted for a future crop.