Wild Ramp. Illustration by D. Pifer.
First impressions sometimes stink. A boy sitting across from me in eighth grade art class exhaled an aroma that made my eyes water. Somebody else asked him about it and he said he’d been eating leeks. He said they tasted good, but none of us were convinced. His breath fogged the air with the combined odors of onion and garlic, but much, much stronger.
Decades passed and when we first moved to the Shenandoah Valley, my wife and I encountered clumps of wild leeks, known locally as ramps, growing in the woods. We heard about spring ramp festivals but never attended one. Then we found fresh harvested ramps for sale at a farm market in Charles Town. We decided since ramps were an important part of our home state’s culture, we wanted to taste what we’d been missing.
We chopped them up, sauteed them in butter and had them with toast and scrambled eggs. Far from being strong and pungent, their flavor was delicate and mild. The kitchen was full of their wonderful aroma. We were hooked.
Wild leeks appear in April and May and form big patches, chiefly in woodlands with a limestone base. The leaves die back by the end of May and in June or July a stalk appears that turns into a white globe-like cluster of flowers. Each individual flower forms three shiny, blue-black seeds that drop off in late summer, hence the scientific name, Allium tricoccum, meaning “three-seeded onion.”
West Virginians have always known wild leeks as ramps, a word with a long history. In the days of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I, leeks were known as “ramsons.” Indigenous Americans of the Abenaki nation call them winos, meaning “uncertain ones,” because patches of ramps may not come up in the same spot year after year. Natives treasured ramps as a spring tonic, and held ramp festivals as a spiritual practice and to celebrate the arrival of spring. Natives introduced ramps to European settlers and ramp festivals became an essential part of Appalachian culture. Ramp festivals have received even more attention in recent years. Trendy restaurants now feature ramps as a highlight of their spring menus. The resulting “ramp revival” has led to overharvesting and has placed the future of wild ramps in danger.
While urban demand for spring ramps puts pressure on the already thinning wild plant populations, it also provides income for rural Indigenous people who gather them in the woods. In her 2021 interview for Atlas Obscura, Amanda Gokee featured Kim and Les Hook, an indigenous couple who gathered ramps in the Vermont woods to supply New York city restaurants.
Les Hook, a member of the Abenaki tribe, described “thickets of ramps exploding in parts of the woods where they’ve never grown before. But in order to benefit the plant, you have to take care of what you’re harvesting: taking only a few ramps from a patch, covering the roots so they stay intact, protecting a patch from grazing animals, educating others about how to harvest ethically. It’s a reciprocal relationship that comes with the responsibility to care for the plants.”
My wife and I save the bulbs and roots of all the ramps we buy, soak them in wet paper towels and plant them in a shady spot. Last year one of them bloomed and produced seeds. Maybe one day we’ll have our own ramp patch.
Doug Pifer is an artist, naturalist, and writer. He has a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Penn State and has been an editor and art educator. His illustrations have appeared in various books and magazines and he has been a contributor to The Observer for several years. He lives with his wife and assorted animals on 5.7 acres in a historic farmhouse near Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
By Doug Pifer