If you look at the 1st post i made there is a link Ramp (Allium tricoccum) leaf wilt disease @Fruitfanatic made the post with the photos of a problem his ramps were having. These are his photos and his post.
Clarkinks: sorry, I didn’t check the links in your post, only looked at the photos.
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Sometimes we add in some garlic during the early season as they are less strong but by mid season we don’t. If I find some wild onion we add that in as well.
I’m not claiming to be an expert but that is how they start to look around mid May around here. The leaves die back and if there has been enough moisture the flower comes up. Last year was a drought year here nothing happened after the leaves died. My understanding is the leaves die after the tree leaves have come out because they are unable to get much if any sun.
That first part was a reply to mrsg47
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They’re what’s known as a spring ephemeral. They’re adapted to leaf out during the time the tree leaves aren’t out, and to lose their leaves shortly thereafter, having done all of the necessary photosynthesis. Sounds like you know that, more or less, but the way you explained it would suggest they might grow longer if they stayed in the sun. That isn’t so.
You’re very fortunate to have so many ramps. Where are you located roughly? Do you live near a huge talus slope or maybe a rich shady floodplain? Do you have many other interesting ephemerals growing nearby? Often you’ll find bloodroot, Canada wild ginger, trout lily, blue cohosh, and others growing nearby. Many of these are pretty fragile and increasingly quite rare.
Ramps don’t disperse far at all, so you do have to be a bit aware of the potential for overharvesting. I’m not sure you could make a dent in 25 acres, though people who harvest and sell have reduced the population dramatically in some spots. Their seed travels no more than 2 or 3 ft. so they spread veeeery slowly. They are not adapted to deal with disturbance, so they are extirpated from much otherwise suitable habitat due to land use over the past couple of centuries.
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Any tips on finding ramps? When is the best time? Is there a specific weather pattern, amount of daylight that triggers growth? Do they grow in mountain, hills, lowland? What are some other easily identifiable species often found next to Ramps?
Yes I can see how my explanation was misleading, they never make it out of May leafed out. I’m in upstate NY Southern Tier region/ Finger lakes. We have three properties only 2 have them, I’m trying to spread them via seed to the third. The common trait between our 5 patches is abundant Sugar maple, 4 of them have a slope, east and south, and 3 have streams running through them.
I have an abundant amount of trout lily, others I have seen is False Hellebore, Trillium, Spring Beauty, Blue Cohosh, and extremely rare is Jack in the pulpit. Later in the year these areas get a lot of Ghost pipes growing. I’ve never seen Bloodroot but its probably there I might assume it was Spring Beauty.
I’m aware of the overharvesting, 3 years ago as the emerald ash borer was coming in we decided to log the properties before we lost all that value. I was very worried they would decimate most of the patches due to heavy machinery and increased light coming into forest floor, for two years it seemed they were declining but they’ve bounced back very well. Anyway I’ve only been harvesting the ones out of the logging paths as I will be starting a maple operation in 2-3 years. I’ve yet to clear one whole path, and if I some how clean all the paths up I will only be targeting 3 leafed Ramps and never more than 10% of a cluster.
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can ramps be planted? can you grow them, or are they too difficult.
See @Betweentwoponds description below you’re post. It’s a very good summary of where to look for ramps, the conditions they prefer, and the species they associate with. The like moist (not wet) rich soil (meaning high organic matter and high levels of calcium) and favor east aspects.
They’re pretty easy to grow @resonanteye. If you find a patch you can transplant and divide it, preferably after it’s gone dormant, usually around the end of May or so here. The seeds aren’t produced in abundance but you can help them to spread by broadcasting the seeds some. Ordinarily they just fall and germinate very close to the mother plant. They’re not a high return crop, really, but I enjoy spreading them around and having more to harvest as time goes on.
Most of mine are planted on a massive brush pile that I had leveled and capped with a bit of soil about 15 years ago. It’s now has several feet of rich humus soil. It started growing jack in the pulpit and trillium after a few years, and I’ve added to the diversity with ramps, wild ginger, mayapple, maidenhair fern, sassafras, spice bush, and Carolina silverbell, among other things.
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@resonanteye
Ramps are not common where I live . But they are in the mountains of Wv.
On a trip to the Monongahela national Forest years ago,
I stopped at a Ranger station and ask him if there were ramps around and where I could find them and if I can harvest some.
They told me I could harvest ramps and pointed me in the right direction.
It was late summer and the leaves were gone but you could see where they were by the seed heads sticking up.
I started digging some bulbs but it was tedious without the right tool.
Then I started popping off the seed heads and putting them in a bag ,that was much easier.
The bulbs I harvested required poking them back in the ground bending over.
The seeds I just went for a walk on my farm and broadcast them in a shaded wood land . For years I didn’t think they grew but after about five years they were everywhere that I threw them. Now , I have my own source of seeds, I try to spread them farther every chance I get
Planting from seeds is much easier.
Sadly , due to my bad knees , I seldom make it to my ramp patch these days .
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Lately there have been concerns of over harvesting ramps due to their recent popularity. Many ramp festivals, commercial diggers selling to the city’s ., etc.
Digging plants on a large scale can obviously reduce populations.
Some patches are so thick , one cannot walk without stepping on them. Harvesting seed or even digging a few plants from these thick patches does little to reduce their numbers, as some just have no room for more plants . But over harvesting is a problem.
I like to plant them at the top of steep slopes . The seed is Round so my thought is they will roll down hill on leafs .?
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oh gosh yeah I’ve not seen them myself growing, but my friends brought me some to eat. I wish I had seed!
Sheffields usually has seed.
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perfect thank you!
A nice video on ramps, in western NC.
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I recently went on a guided wildflower walk in a state forest. A sign near the beginning of the main trail warned that it was illegal to remove ramps. I don’t remember the exact wording, but what is illegal, as I understand it, is to remove a whole plant or harvest ramps for commercial purposes. Others on the walk sampled ramps as we went along. There were thousands. There were also thousands of trillium, which you are also not allowed to remove.
My wife tells me there are ramps in our woods, but I’ve never seen them, and she hasn’t harvested them.
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