The Egyptian Walking Onion

Life Cycle of the Egyptian Walking Onion

Egyptian Walking Onions like rich green candlesticks.

Every year the Egyptian Walking Onion goes through ebb and flow of its life cycle. More accurately, it perhaps should be called its reproductive cycle. The perpetual cycle is as follows:

  • Leaf Stage:

    spring emergence of new leaves

  • The Candlestick Stage:

    topset stalk growth with papery protective capsule

  • The Hatching Stage:

    the paper capsule tears open to reveal what's inside

  • The Topset and Flower Stage:

    topset and flower growth and development

  • The Walking Stage:

    topsets fall to the ground and take root

  • The Dormant Stage:

    ground bulbs take a nap when their work is done

  • The Dividing Stage:

    ground bulbs wake up and produce offsets and leaves

Leaf Stage

February-April

Spring emergence of Egyptian Walking Onion leaves.

Egyptian Walking Onions are one of the first plants to emerge from the garden in late winter/early spring. The leaves poke up through the soil like little green spikes and shoot towards the sky despite the frost or snow. The blue-green leaves are round and hollow, and tasty! They are the solar panels that photosynthesize and create sugar to feed the plant and grow onion bulbs at both ends. Yes, both ends! These plants grow onions in the ground and in the air!

Tender green leaves of the Egyptian Walking Onion.

You can clip some leaves at this stage and use them like scallions or chives. As the spring progresses, the leaves will make way for the dominant stalk that will grow up to 3 feet high! At the top of the stalk, a cluster of bulblets will begin to grow. These bulblets are also known as "bulbils" or "sets." We will refer to them as "topsets" throughout this website because they literally are onion sets growing at the top of the plant. Every Egyptian Walking Onion plant will produce a cluster of sets at the top, hence the name, "Top Onion," or "Topset Onion" meaning they are top-setting onions.

Red Egyptian Walking Onion variety actively growing in March.

Candlestick Stage

May

Egyptian Walking Onion plants can look like green taper candles with flames.

In the spring, a dominate stalk grows straight up from the base of the plant. It can grow up to 3 feet high. At its top is a papery sack called a spathe. It is white with green stripes and is very thin. The plant now resembles dark green taper candle with a flame at the top. We are now in the "candlestick phase". The spathe is where the topsets develop, though they are still hidden inside, so you cannot see them yet.

Sunlit Egyptian Walking Onion capsules looking like candle flames.
Paper capsules in a spiral protecting the growing topsets inside.

The spiraling spathe reminds me of a jester hat.
Inside the little "paper bag" at the top, it has already been determined what the structures will be:

  • any number of topsets in a cluster
  • tightly packed folded leaves
  • secondary scapes attaching 2 or 3 clusters of topsets together
  • flower buds
  • flower buds mixed with topsets
  • any combination of the above
They are developing and getting ready to "hatch"!

Hatching Stage

June

What? hatching stage?
Absolutely! Similar to an egg in incubation, the structures that are developing at the top of the plant are in the protection of the papery "shell" until it splits open, and they "hatch". This phase of the Egyptian Walking Onion life cycle could very well be called the "hatching phase". What the structures actually are, remains a mystery until they hatch. Though sometimes when the sunlight is just right, you can see a silhouette inside the spathe and get a sneak peak of what the onion plant will eventually display at the top of its stalk: a cluster of topsets, a Medusa head of leaves, flowers, etc. When the papery spathe tears open, the contents inside is now revealed in all its glory! The plant has literally given birth to the next generation. After hatching, the structures begin to unfurl and stretch out. Growth continues through the summer, up in the air, at the top of the stalk.

Topset leaves unfurl from a splitting spathe.
The papery capsule has opened to let the topset leaves out.
The hatching spathe revealing secondary scapes inside.
Secondary scapes unfurling from the open spathe.

Topset Stage

June-July

Red Egyptian Walking Onion topsets are complete plants in themselves.

An Egyptian Walking Onion topset looks like, and essentially is, a miniature onion. They are complete plants in themselves and can be plucked off the stalk and planted directly into the ground. They look like mini versions of the parent plant complete with root nodules, a mini bulb, and leaves. Topsets are generally smaller than the annual red, yellow, or white garden variety onion sets. They range in size from 1/4 inch to 1 inch in diameter, and average about the size of a marble.

A beautiful cluster ball of red topsets.

Topsets are arranged in a cluster ball at the top of the plant stalk. Botanically this structure is an umbel, the same type of flower cluster produced by most alliums. Each cluster can have as few as 2 topsets, or as many as 30 or more topsets. After hatching, the newly emerged, bright green topsets continue to grow and reach maturity in late summer. In zone 5-6 this would be at the end of July. By this time, the topsets have achieved their final color. The red variety has turned a deep maroon color. The white variety is no longer bright green and now has white papery outer protective layers. Many topsets have little green sprouts and even mini root nodules. Some have many snake-like leaves resembling a Medusa head, and others may sprout out a second stalk (branch) that will give rise to a second cluster of topsets, hence the name, "Tree Onion." Read more about topsets.

The first topset cluster branches to a second topset cluster.

During their first year of growth most Egyptian Walking Onion plants will not produce topsets. There are some exceptions to this depending on your growing conditions and how big the topset is that you started with. The bigger the topset, the better the chance that it might produce its own topsets in the same year, or during the next growing season. This is because a bigger topset will have more stored energy to put into growing and producing topsets. As for the average topset, you might see only greens the first year (first growing season.) But don't be disappointed, your Egyptian Walking Onion plants will sprout again the following year in full force and produce their first clusters of topsets. Read more about first year growth.

Two jumbo topsets of the red variety that are still growing.

Flowers

June

The tiny white, green striped, 6-petaled flower of the Egyptian Walking Onion.

Although the Egyptian Walking Onion is a top-setting onion, it will often times produce miniature flowers among its topsets. The flowers are about 1/4" wide. They have 6 white petals and 6 stamens. Each petal has a vertical pea-green stripe. They are very similar to the flowers produced by other allium species.

A bouquet of tiny Egyptian Walking Onion flowers instead of topsets.

Most Egyptian Walking Onion flowers dry up and wither as the topsets compete with them for energy. Flowers seem to occur more often in crowded situations when the plant is older and has divided in the ground for two or more years and has formed a large clump of around 20 or more bulbs in the ground. They also appear if the conditions are dry.

Flowers growing and branching from a cluster of developing topsets.

Do they produce seeds?
Egyptian Walking Onion flowers really don't get a chance to produce a seed. My guess is because they are competing with growing topsets on the same stalk, or they could be sterile since they are a hybrid cross species. So an Egyptian Walking Onion seed is a rarity - at least I've never seen a mature and viable one. I am working on some cross pollinating experiments to try to get some seed production.

A cluster of both red topsets and flowers.

Walking Stage

July-September

That's right! The WALKING stage! What other plant can you say that about! Ok, there is a walking iris, and the walking palm. And to be honest, the Babington's Leek walks too! (Stay tuned for more about Babington's Leeks).

Egyptian Walking Onions on the march.

When the topsets become heavy enough, they will pull the stalk over to the ground. If the soil conditions are right, the fallen topsets will take root where they land on the ground and grow into new Egyptian Walking Onion plants, hence the name, "Walking Onion." They will literally walk right across your garden! But is this really the mechanism in which they walk? Read more about my theory of how Egyptian Walking Onionswalk.

Don't worry about them being invasive. They can only move at about a pace of 2 to 3 feet per year. If you want them to stay put, just harvest the topsets. What to do with all your topsets? Plant them, eat them, or share them with neighbors and friends! More about taming your topsets.

Egyptian Walking Onions in the act of walking.
Ground level view of Egyptian Walking Onions arched over walking.

Dormant Stage

August-September

When the topsets are busy walking in late summer, the bulbs in the ground are ready to take a break. They have done their work of making topsets and slip into quiet dormancy. Meanwhile, the leaves have all died back. The stalks have turned golden-tan. The topsets are settling into their new piece of ground.

The golden topset stalks still attached to the dormant bulbs.

Dividing Stage

September-October

Multiple offsets forming from a mature Egyptian Walking Onion bulb.

After the bulbs in the ground have taken a short nap, they wake up again and go back to work and begin their division phase. The mother bulb will produce several baby bulbs, or offsets. These are produced from the bottom (basal plate) of only one side of the original bulb. Each new offset grows to become an individual plant. Each bulb is a small shallot-like onion which can be harvested. Once harvested, however, the plant will obviously not grow back. Over time the bulbs will keep dividing and form a large clump of onion plants.

These leaves persisted all winter long on the white variety.

In the fall, new leaves grow from the newly divided plants. This is basically a second leaf stage. This autumn flush of leaves may persist through the winter if it is mild one. Our white variety of Egyptian Walking Onions kept their fall leaves all winter (2025) because the temperature stayed above 10° F. Usually, our winter temperatures drop well below zero and the leaves die back. In mild winter of 2025, the white variety had leaves, but the red variety did not.

A clump that is not crowded produces bigger bulbs.

Stalks, and topsets will grow from the clump of onions each year. There can be as many as 50 bulbs or more in one clump after several years. It is a good idea to divide the clumps and thin them out because the topsets and the bulbs that grow from crowded clumps tend to be much smaller. Crowded clumps also tend to produce more flowers and less topsets. The plants themselves are smaller and so are the bulbs in the ground.

Crowded clumps produce smaller bulbs in the ground.

As you can see, the Egyptian Walking Onion is a fascinating and complicated plant with so many stages in one year. The physical variety among the plants is incredible. They are all different with different personalities. Some grow straight, others arch over. Some grow topsets that are tiered with interconnecting branches, others grow a single cluster. Some topsets have big leaves, others just tiny sprouts. Some produce flowers, and others just topsets. They truly are the unique, incredible, edible, perennial onion...that WALKS!