Tanners Canyon Onion

Bulbs usually 1 of a cluster, sometimes short-rhizomatous basally, elongate, to 5 × 1–1.5 cm; outer coats enclosing 1 or more bulbs, gray or brown, reticulate, cells very coarse-meshed, open, fibrous; inner coats whitish, cells vertically elongate and regular or obscure. Leaves persistent, green at anthesis, 3–6, sheathing; blade solid, flat, broadly channeled, 25–50 cm × 3–7 mm, margins entire or minutely denticulate. Scape persistent, solitary, erect, terete or ± 4-angled, 30–50 cm × 1–3.5 mm. Umbel persistent, erect, loose, 10–25-flowered, hemispheric-globose, bulbils unknown; spathe bracts persistent, 2–3, 3–5-veined, lanceolate, ± equal, apex long-acuminate. Flowers ± stellate, 5–10 mm; tepals spreading or reflexed, white or pink, lanceolate, ± equal, withering in fruit and exposing capsules, margins entire, apex acute, midrib becoming noticeably thickened; stamens ± equaling tepals to exserted; anthers purple; pollen light yellow; ovary conspicuously crested; processes 6, central, usually connate in pairs across septa, ± erect, flattened, to 2 mm, margins lacerate, usually well developed in fruit; style linear, equaling stamens; stigma capitate, unlobed or obscurely lobed; pedicel 15–25 mm, elongating in fruit. Seed coat shining; cells each with minute, central papilla. 2n = 28.

Ariz.; Mexico.

Flowering Jun--Sep.

Rocky slopes, stream banks, and marshy ground, mountains; 1600--2800m.

Allium plummerae is a species of plant native to southern Arizona (Pima and Cochise Counties) in the United States and to Sonora in Mexico. It is known by the common names Plummer's onion and Tanner's Canyon onion. It grows on rocky slopes and stream banks in mountains regions at elevations of 1600–2800 m.

Allium plummerae produces elongate bulbs up to 5 cm long but rarely more than 1.5 cm in diameter. Flowers are up to 10 mm across; tepals white or pink; anthers purple; pollen yellow.

The epithet "plummerae" is in honor of one member of the expedition that collected those specimens, botanist Sara Plummer Lemmon.