Angels Thompson has asked about whether she has wild garlic in her garden or not; she gave a description of the flowers. I really cannot answer questions like that but suggest that anybody who is not sure gets a good wild flower guide from their local library.
Wild garlic can be confused with two poisonous varieties:
a) Early in the season when the leaves just come up there is a slight similarity with 'lords and ladies' or wild arum. However once the leaves are developed they are easy to tell apart. Wild arum has irregular shaped leaves with deep veins. While wild garlic leaves have smooth convex shapes with a single vein and a slight striping of the surface. The second photo in an earlier post shows wild arum growing among wild garlic.
b) Later in the season there is a similarity with lily of the valley. The leaves of wild garlic are green while lily of the valley leaves grow from a purple stem. The wild garlic flowers generally have a star shape with 6 petals. Lily of the valley has bell shaped flowers. Wild garlic leaves smell garlicky while those of lily of the valley do not.
The photo above shows that the wild garlic leaves have parallel stripes on their surface.
The photo above gives a closer view of some flowers. Note also that the leaves of some younger plants are narrower than more mature ones.
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