Ramps – wild relatives of the onion that have been a delicious rite of spring for generations in the Appalachian Mountains – are popping their short-lived leaves up through the litter on forest floors across their range.

And that spells excitement for old-timers throughout Appalachia, a booming community of wild-foods foragers and a growing cadre of enthusiastic tasters in the foodie world.

The ramp, which also is known as the ramson, buckram, wild garlic, wild leek and North American leek, is riding a wave of popularity that could add it to that list of wild things that we humans have loved to the edge of oblivion.

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On the rise

Ramps have been gaining in popularity for decades, and are now turning up on restaurant menus, at farmers’ markets and even in some grocery store produce aisles.

Some are being grown on farms and agroforestry operations, and in-home gardens, but many more are being harvested from the wild. And, without any real measure of the impact of all that ravenous love we’re bestowing on ramps, no one really know the full extent of what’s happening with the wild population.

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Penn State

A better understanding

That lack of information led the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture to fund an interdisciplinary study, led by researchers in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Science, to learn more about the market for ramps, the state of the wild population, the potential need for protection, the biology and chemistry of the ramp, and its nutritional makeup.

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Penn State

An invading threat

They’ll also investigate the ramp’s vulnerability to the onion leafminer. The insect is native to Poland and Germany but has been spreading rapidly throughout Europe and into Asia, and in 2015 was found in Lancaster County, marking its first sighting in the Western Hemisphere. Some wonder if the highly destructive insect is leapfrogging from one path of ramps to the next.

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Why so tasty?

"There have only been two studies done on ramp chemistry, so we don't know much about them as an edible plant," said Eric Burkhart, co-lead researcher, an instructor in the Ecosystem Science and Management department at Penn State. By performing tests on plants, researchers intend to learn how the known key chemicals — sulfur compounds such as allicin — vary in the plants based on factors such as time of harvest, stage of growth and part consumed — leaf versus bulb.

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H. Alexander Talbot

A new crop?

A rising number of producers wish to manage ramps as an agroforestry crop, noted Burkhart, who also is plant science program director at the University's Shaver's Creek Environmental Center. So, the researchers will be gathering information on the ramp trade in the state to better understand market opportunities, concerns and constraints for guiding forest farmers.

To do that, researchers will work to identify harvesters and forest-based producers in the state who are involved in the sale and trade of ramps at farmers markets, grocery stores and restaurants.

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Agroforestry

The research also will provide the Department of Agriculture with information on the trade in ramps at farmers markets, grocery stores and restaurants to better understand market opportunities, concerns and constraints for guiding forest farmers.

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Victor Grigas

Ramp mustard

"We have a project partner, Laurel Vista Farms of Somerset, that is producing value-added products such as ramp mustards," said Burkhart, who also conducts research on other non-timber forest products in Pennsylvania, such as ginseng and goldenseal. "This particular partner will serve as a sampling collaborator and also a key informant to help us better understand the current and potential market for ramps."

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Premshree Pillar

Nutritionally charged

Ramps have a purported medicinal aspect as well. The plant was cherished by early native peoples and is still valued by herbal healers for its perceived medicinal properties. High in vitamins A and C, iron and antioxidants, the plant is believed by some to offer the same blood-cleansing, heart-healthy qualities of garlic that may also contribute to lower blood pressure.

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Changing flavors

"Because the knowledge of ramps' nutritional and medicinal composition is limited, our research will quantify phytochemicals of importance to both flavor profile and human health as they vary in relation to plant stage and seasonality," said Joshua Lambert, associate professor of food science, the other co-lead researcher of the project.

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Leafminer

The research also will include an integrated greenhouse study overseen by Shelby Fleisher, professor of entomology. Researchers will cultivate ramps and infest them with allium leaf miner pupae to see if the invasive insects prefer the plants to leeks and onions. And ramps will be examined in the forests across the state using citizen science partners to determine the presence or absence of leaf miners.

Fleisher has kept a colony of allium leaf miner pupae alive that he collected in Huntingdon County last fall, just for this study.

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Strict limits in Canada

While ramps have no special protections in Pennsylvania, they have been given extra attention elsewhere.

In Canada, where ramp populations are less widespread than in the U.S., ramps are listed as a threatened species and may be harvested at an annual rate of no more than 50 plants and not within a national park. All commercial sales are banned.

Ramps are considered a species of special concern in Maine, Rhode Island and Tennessee, and commercially exploited in Tennessee.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee has banned the harvesting of ramps since 2002.

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An earthier garlic taste

The ramp – Allium tricoccum – is a member of the lily family and closely related to onions, scallions, leeks and the like.

Its taste has been likened to an earthier garlic, stronger than the mild-onion flavor of a leek, but more “garlicky” than a scallion.

Ramps also are fabled for their strong scent, which issues forth as the plant is being pried from the soil. Some claim it continues to ooze from the pores of anyone who eats too large a quantity for days after the meal.

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Penn State

Careful harvest

Harvesters remove the entire plant from the ground, including the bulb, when collecting ramps.

For a plant that grows primarily by rhizome, anything more than a scattered and sporadic harvest of that type will cut into a patch’s potential to reproduce. A harvest of just 10 percent of the ramps in a patch can take the ramps a decade or more to recover.

It can take 18 months for a ramp to germinate from a seed and as long as 7 years to grow to harvestable size.

Careful harvest is needed to ensure the continuation of each colony of ramps in the wild.

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Wikimedia Commons

Ramp festival

Pennsylvania’s longest-running celebration of the ramp is the Mason-Dixon Ramp Festival, which is planned for Saturday and Sunday, April 28-29, at Mason-Dixon Historical Park in Mount Morris, Greene County. Hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. each day.

Among the fare at the festival will be ramp and dandelion wine, Pat's ramp butter, Dash o’ Ramps, ramp burgers, fried potatoes and ramps, ramp potato soup, beer-battered deep-fried ramps, and the Mason-Dixon Dog, in a bun topped with chili, coleslaw, onions, kraut and ramps.

The event in Mount Morris is the northernmost ramp festival.

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Long-standing tradition

Ramps may be trendy today, but for generations of Appalachian families they were an anticipated break to the repetitive dried beans and salted meat diet of long winters. The leaves of the ramp were some of the earliest greens they would spot each spring, and they ate them greedily.

That annual spring reprieve from the bland diet of winter earned ramps a special place in Appalachian culture. The hungry search for the onion relative continues as an annual tradition in many families.

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