What Are Ramps? The Wild Spring Green Chefs and Foragers Adore

Article by Adam H. Callaghan | Photography by Nicole McConville | Published May 1, 2025

Name a plant that signals the start of spring.

If you said daffodils or crocuses, maybe your internal clock is still set to European time, just like these introduced species that get a head start on flowers native to Turtle Island (aka North America). Trees are our earliest bloomers here, accompanied closely by spring ephemerals that live fast and die back young, rushing to soak in the sun’s warmth after the last frost has passed but before the new canopy shades them out.

For thousands of years, one of the most sought-after woodland harbingers of spring has been Allium tricoccum. Depending on where you live in eastern North America, you might know this native, unshowy perennial best as a ramp, a ramson, a wild leek, or a wild onion, like the Native Americans in Oklahoma who host wild onion dinners dedicated to the treat every Saturday throughout its brief growing season. And each year since I transplanted a handful of ramps that a friend brought me from our local farmers market, I eagerly await the emergence of a small but slowly multiplying patch in my shady New England backyard, a ready source of spring pride.

“Transforming a memory burned in the brain”

If you’re living off the land, ramps are a crucial early source of fresh nutrients after a long winter. They typically thrust their vibrant emerald-green leaves and narrow red or white stalks from the rich soil of deciduous forests and floodplains sometime in March or April, measuring their lifespan in weeks rather than months. Even if you’re not strictly beholden to the natural cycle for sustenance, the leaves and bulbs of ramps provide a punchy taste of place. “Intensely green and almost earthy, they taste like the woods, with a powerful heat that will knock your socks off,” says Susi Gott Séguret, an author, chef, fiddler, and forager based in Madison County, North Carolina, on a farm of over 200 acres with several naturally populated “ramp hollers.” “Like truffles, but in their own unique way, they elevate whatever dish they encounter,” she says, “transforming a bite into a memory burned in the brain.”

This fleeting performance and pungent flavor, somewhere between garlic and onion, make ramps beloved throughout their range. They’re usually advertised last-minute by restaurants on social media rather than printed on any permanent menu. They can be used fresh “as with any other leafy herb — chopped, in a sauce, maybe grilled,” perhaps atop a smoked hamachi pate, says Saca Monk, head chef at the New American restaurant Littler in Durham, North Carolina.

Short-lived ramps are also perfect candidates for preserving. At Littler, “We have dried them and used them in a green garlic consommé for a seared scallop dish,” Monk says. They also recommend infusing ramps into oil or vinegar, or blanching or grilling them for a freezable sauce. On Deer Isle in Maine, Aragosta at Goose Cove serves a bright-green ramp sauce with seasonal root veggies or scallops once its seasonal dining room opens in May. In Chicago, whose name derives from an Indigenous word for ramps, Virtue Restaurant has pickled ramps for its inventive take on Southern cuisine, serving them with salmon and creamed corn. Oiji Mi and bōm, Michelin-starred Korean siblings in New York City, buy about 500 pounds of ramps each spring, serving many fresh from the grill and preserving the rest in a brine of soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar for use in dishes like cold soba and beef tartare throughout the year. 

An Appalachian signature

“Ramps have become synonymous with Appalachia, a signature ingredient, along with moonshine,” says Séguret, whose books include Appalachian Appetite: Recipes from the Heart of America and Child of the Woods: An Appalachian Odyssey. “Ramp festivals abound in the Southern Appalachian mountains, giving folks a chance to gather and share their intensity, always in the company of music, and often with contests to see who can eat the most of the ingredient in question.”

West Virginia — where you can eat the likes of ramp bagels at Zeke’s Breakfast and Bakes in Morgantown and chase that down with ramp wine (described as a traditional spring tonic, but also great for cooking) from Kirkwood Winery in nearby Summersville — is home to the most venerable such ramp festival, the Feast of the Ramson that gives the town of Richwood its nickname of “Ramp Capital of the World.” The town just celebrated its 86th annual feast, serving 1,500 attendees more than 200 pounds of ramps.

Leave more than you take — or grow your own

In recent years, ramps “became popular when well-known chefs began to showcase them and using them became an indicator of knowing your season and your locality,” Monk says. Of course, ramps’ star status has led to a contemporary gold rush that has destroyed many wild patches. Experts like Alexis Nikole Nelson, who goes by Black Forager on social media, spend a lot of time encouraging responsible harvesting of these slow growers, which can take up to seven years from seed to flower. Many, including Amy Demers of CT Foraging Club in Connecticut, urge foragers to gather less than 10 percent of leaves from large populations. One popular strategy from the “leave more than you take” playbook involves gathering only one leaf from plants that have multiple, leaving at least one leaf and the bulb, rhizome, and roots intact so the plant can still photosynthesize and store energy. “Trimming the leaves only is a sustainability measure,” says Monk.

Another slightly more advanced technique is based on Indigenous land management practices that date back millennia: thinning dense clusters of the clonally reproducing bulbs to give more space and energy to the remaining bulbs and replanting some elsewhere to help the population spread. “I've transplanted a few bulbs closer to my house, as they like to grow in steep, relatively inaccessible places, and they multiply like daffodils,” says Séguret, who also teaches attendees of her Appalachian Culinary Experience how to forage and prepare the coveted ingredient. The USDA has also promoted forest farming ramps to help meet demand and reduce pressure on wild populations.

Suppose you don’t have access to a patch that you know is thriving and ready to expand. In that case, you can start your own ramp holler with seeds or bulbs from Vermont-based Gates Hill Farm, a rare commercial operation that works with a variety of farmers to sustainably grow and harvest ramps. Ramps have a reputation for being a finicky crop. Still, Séguret’s experience supports anecdotal evidence from my own young ramp patch, which is that ramps aren’t difficult to grow — they’re simply unhurried.

With that in mind, 50 ramps for $50 is a bargain. Think of it as an investment in an indelible taste of spring for countless years to come.