Instead of making seeds, shallots, like some other Alliums, produce bulbils – essentially tiny little shallots – at the end of their flower stalks.  The heavy cluster of bulbils at the end of the long flower stalk will eventually fall over some distance from the parent plant, enabling the plant to “walk.”

I just learned that garlic does this as well, producing maybe 50 (depending on the variety, I suppose) tiny little garlic bulbils within each flower head.  Why am I just now finding this out?  I’ve written about garlic scapes before, which make for great eating.  In truth, I always harvest the scapes before they have a chance to mature.  This year, however, a couple of scapes escaped, ending up in the compost, where they continued to mature, each forming a flower head full of tiny little garlic bulbils.  I collected these today and sprinkled them in the food forest, so hopefully they will grow in and among the other plants in the herbaceous layer.

Back to the shallots…  Instead of letting nature take its course, I will harvest these shallot bulbils and hold onto them until October, as that’s the time for planting onions and garlic and shallots around here.

As for the butterfly, I have a message out to my MG friend Kathy, who is a butterfly enthusiast, and who correctly identified the Nelson’s Hairstreak that visited the garden a couple of weeks ago.  I’ll post an update when we figure out what this little beauty’s name is.