Anyone who has looked into onions quickly learns that people mix up bulb onions, green onions, scallions, spring onions, bunching onions, and the many other names within the broad allium family.
To compound matters, even knowledgeable sources slip up, spreading errors that make the mix clearer yet muddier.
A typical mistake is to assume scallions and spring onions are simply immature bulb onions pulled early, before they swell and turn pungent. Another version of this mix-up treats them all as one single plant instead of acknowledging that some varieties grow thicker tops while others form proper bulbs.
Shallots, too, find their way into the tangle. Although they share the same botanical family, shallots have a mild, garlic-like flavor that plainly sets them apart from the stronger, crisper bulbs most people picture.
An article in the Illinois Times notes that while scallions and shallots are distinct, many general dictionaries equate scallion with shallot. This confusion likely stems from échalion, an older French term for shallot, which looks similar at first glance.
Botanists now classify shallots under the name Allium cepa var. aggregatum, although older sources used Allium ascalonicum and some still refer to the bulb by that label.
Another member of the same plant family, chives, is often tossed into the conversation and mistaken for one of the onion types. People may merge green onions, scallions, spring onions, and chives or swap a pair of these words without noticing.
Chives are, in fact, the smallest relative and bear the name Allium schoenoprasum. They have hollow green stalks that closely imitate the upper part of a scallion yet arrive in a daintier package.
Most home cooks meet chives sprinkled into sour cream dips, perched on baked potatoes, or whisked into a marinade for salmon or chicken to add a mild onion brightness. Chives share the characteristic onion taste familiar from larger bulb onions, yet their profile is markedly subtler.
Because they serve mainly to season rather than to bulk up a dish, chives fall into the herb category, unlike the vegetable status of the other onions being considered here. Still, they swap easily with scallions or green onions in most recipes; the bigger onions simply deliver a more pronounced kick.
The terms sweet, mild, and pungent you just used to describe onion taste pop up often on seed packets, too, acting as a shorthand guide to flavor. In some places, pungent onions end up labeled American onions, while the milder or sweeter kinds get the European tag instead.
Once you dig into onion research, however, youll quickly trip over conflicting claims and bold assertions from one source to the next. Because of that muddle, the facts posted here lean on the USDA PLANTS Database, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, and trustworthy extension offices at land-grant universities to settle arguments when experts disagree.
To clear the air, what follows is a plain list that sorts bulb onions, green onions, spring onions, scallions, bunching onions, multiplier onions, and a few other alliums that keep showing up in grocery bags.
Ways of Describing and Discussing Onion Varieties
Onions are often spoken of by their bulb color- white onions, yellow or brown onions, red or purple onions- and those labels quietly say much more than just hue.
Yellow onions sit at top of the onion family because they caramelize beautifully, turning sweet and rich as they cook. Most common sweet onion types share their yellow skin, yet not every yellow onion is sweet and not every sweet onion looks yellow. (More on that later.) Within the yellow group, flavor can range from mild to fairly sharp, depending on the specific cultivar farmer chose.
White onions pop up in Mexican cooking-pico de gallo, guacamole, the mix for grilled meat tacos-and also show up in potato salad at summer picnics. Chefs like them for white sauce, where color must stay clean. Compared to yellow, these bulbs usually bite harder and carry a spicier heat that comes through even after gentle cooking.
Red onions give cooks a wild card because their taste swings from sweet to sharp in the same batch. Most home cooks reach for them raw, resting bright purple rings atop burgers, sandwiches, or garden salads. Still, grill masters slide whole red onion slices onto skewers, and bakers fold diced pieces into roasted vegetable mixes
You will encounter several specialty onion names, each with its own subtle meaning. Common varieties include Cipollini, pickling, Maui, Spanish, storage, sweet, and the well-known Vidalia. Some of these overlaps with others, so the names are not always distinct.
FMaui and Vidalia, for instance, both fit the sweet onion label, and the same holds true for some storage onions that may also be called Spanish or pickling types. We clarify those links in the sections that follow.
Bulb Onions (Allium cepa L.)
Bulb onions are also known as garden onions or are simply labeled by their color-white, yellow, or red-purple. They complete their life cycle in a single growing season and are pulled before the next round begins, which would cause them to bolt or bloom and produce seed.
Within this group, onions can further be sorted into long-day, short-day, or day-neutral categories, in addition to their color. Those terms describe the number of daylight hours the plants need to form a storage bulb, a key factor for growers.
Long-day onion types require about 14.5 hours or more of sunlight each day to produce usable bulbs, whereas short-day onions need only 12 to 13 hours of light. Short-day varieties usually have a milder flavor and are often better suited for long-term storage.
Day-neutral onions bulb no matter how long the light lasts, so they can be grown almost anywhere. In contrast, if a long-day or short-day type sits in weak light, you might end up with nothing but pencil-thin green tops.
Sweet Onions
People often call yellow onions sweet, yet true sweet onions do not appear until late summer and usually fade by early fall. These onions contain more sugar and water and far fewer sulfur compounds or pyruvic acid, so chopping them stings your eyes much less.
Because of their higher moisture and thinner skin, sweet onions bruise more easily than many other cooking varieties. Still, their sweet crunch makes them the favorite onion to serve raw in salads, salsas, or on sandwiches.
Texas, Maui, and Vidalia onions each carry the name of the place where they first became famous. Most cooks picture a pale yellow bulb when they hear sweet onion, although red and white versions are available, too. Yellow sweet onions dominate the market, so the red and white counterparts tend to be harder to find. A few noteworthy examples of each class are collected here.
Red Sweet Onions
- Bronze d’ Amposta
- Cipolle di Tropea
- Red Candy Apple
- Monastrell
White Sweet Onions
- Texas Early White
- Siskiyou Sweet
- White Sweet Spanish
Yellow Sweet Onions
- Big Daddy
- Candy
- Copra
- Expression
- Hermiston Sweet
- Miss Megan
- Sapelo Sweet
- Savannah Sweet
- Superex
- Sweet Sandwich Hybrid
- Texas Legend
- Texas Super Sweet 1015Y
- Vidalia
- Walla Walla
- Yellow Granex
- Yellow Sweet Spanish
- Zoey (sometimes called a white onion, but has yellow skin)
Vidalia Onions
Many people use the name Vidalia to describe any sweet onion, yet that term is legally restricted to those grown in a specific region of Georgia. True Vidalias belong exclusively to the yellow category and include such strains as Texas Early Grano and Yellow Granex.
Spanish Onions
Spanish onions can appear in either yellow or red skin. Renowned for their considerable size and mild sweetness, they are frequently sliced raw for sandwiches, salads, or as a garnish. A selection of typical varieties appears below.
- Alisa Craig
- Big Daddy
- California Sweet (also called Sweet Imperial)
- Candy
- Delgado
- Expression
- Lasso
- Latin Lover
- Mira
- Red Burgermaster
- Red Karmen
- Red River
- Riverside Sweet
- Ruby Ring
- Scout
- Siskiyou Sweet
- SV6646NW (a Spanish onion hybrid)
- Walla Walla Sweet Spanish
- White Spanish Bunching
- White Sweet Spanish
- White Sweet Spanish Utah
- Yellow Sweet Spanish
Cipollini Onions
Cipollini is an Italian variety with a distinctive flat, oblong bulb about the size of a golf ball. Once found mainly in fine dining, they now appear in more grocery stores.
Red, white, or yellow versions all share the same mild, sweet flavor. They are most often sliced and caramelized or roasted whole. Some common lines are listed here.
Red Cipollini Onions
- Flat of Italy
- Red Marble
White Cipollini Onions
- Bianca di Maggio
Yellow Cipollini Onions
- Gold Coin
- Yellow Borettana
Pickling Onions
Some onions carry names based on how they are cooked. Pickling onions, for instance, are types whose flavor and size suit brining. To keep jars neat, these onions tend to be small, so pearl, Chinese, and potato onions often fill the role. A shortlist of popular pickling varieties appears below.
White Pickling Onions
Barletta
- Crystal White Wax (also called Crystal Wax Pickling, White Bermuda, Crystal Wax Bermuda, or White Pickling)
- Onion de Paris
- Pacific Pearl
- Pearl Drop
- Southport White Globe
- White Ebenezer
Storage Onions / Keeping Onions
Another onion group, known as storage onions or keeping onions, includes both heirloom and hybrid types specially bred to withstand curing in the sun. Once properly dried, they can last for months through winter, occasionally hanging in attractive braids from the kitchen ceiling.
Yellow onions make up the bulk of storage varieties, yet a few red and white types hold up just as well. These long-keeping onions are especially pungent; their elevated sulfur content often invites tears the moment a knife cuts through their flesh.
A selection of popular storage onions appears below, organized by color.
Yellow Storage Onions
- Australian Brown
- Bridger
- Clear Dawn
- Copra
- Cortland
- Dakota Tears
- Duration
- Expression
- Frontier
- Gate Keeper
- Gunnison
- Hi Keeper
- Keepsake
- Maximus
- Newburg
- New York Early
- Patterson
- Pontiac
- Powell
- Stuttgarter Yellow
- Sweet Sandwich Hybrid
- Talon
- Tough Ball
- Vision
- Yankee
- Yellow Borrettana (a Cipollini onion)
- Yellow Globe Danvers
- Yellow of Parma
White Storage Onions
- Southport White Globe
- Stuttgarter
- White Ebenezer
- White Sweet Spanish
Red Storage Onions
- Bennie’s Red
- Brunswick
- Cabernet
- Desert Sunrise
- Electric
- Monastrell
- Red Bull
- Red Carpet
- Red Creole
- Red Wind
- Red Zeppelin
- Rossa di Milano
- Red Marble
- Redwing
- Ruby Red
- Ruby Ring
- Southport Red Globe
Green Onions
Green onions aren t a particular cultivar, but instead are any type of onion that is harvested prior to bulbing. They re the ones you see in the produce department sold in a bunch, and they re almost always served raw.
Occasionally, green onions may be grilled, however, and in Asian cuisine they re used in cooked dishes like fried rice or the scallion pancake.
When gardeners thin a row of bulb onions they usually save the little extras and use them as green onions in the kitchen, so nothing goes to waste. In casual talk youll hear those babies called green onions, spring onions, scallions, or just small onions almost interchangeably.
Spring Onions
Spring onions are close relatives and that’s why the names blur so easily. The key difference is that spring onions form a noticeably bigger bulb than true green onions. In fact, lots of spring onions sold in stores are really undersized bulbing onions that simply grew a bit longer than their green cousins.
Markets bundle them like green onions and cooks treat them the same way. Some people even call them salad onions because of the crisp bite they add to fresh dishes. Seeds labelled spring onions usually come from plants that do well when harvested early, yet if left in the ground they will mature into full-sized bulbing varieties. The list below names several types frequently grown as spring onions.
- Dynasty Winter King
- Feast
- Rossa Lunga di Firenze
- Straightleaf
- Summer King
Scallions
Scallions-Scallions step from the same onion family as their fleshier cousins, yet they grow without forming a distinct bulb. Picture a very tiny, green onion and you have the right image. Because they look and taste so alike, people casually swap the names scallion, spring onion, and green onion in recipes with no real trouble. Scallions were bred to be mild and grow best in loose, sandy loam.
You will often find young bulbing onions sold as scallions, and marketers may use the name anyway, so the distinction gets muddled. True scallion varieties show a long, white shaft before the green tops start to show.
Their leaves stay softer too, a quality cooks appreciate. Even though scallions belong to Allium cepa, just like many larger onions, these specific cultivars focus on tender green tops, gentle flavor, a long light shaft, and the habit of staying immature when pulled. Below are a few well-known types of scallion.
- Evergreen Hardy White
- Guardsman (a bunching onion and bulbing scallion hybrid)
- Kincho
Pearl Onions (Allium ampeloprasum)
Pearl onions, often labelled mini onions, measure barely half an inch across. Always white, they are sold dried and featured in stews, braises, and meat dishes. Pickled versions appear as cocktail onions in the classic Gibson. Several pearl onion types follow.
- Eclipse
- Pompeii
- Red Marble
Bunching Onions (Allium fistulosum)
Although true bunching onions belong to Allium fistulosum, small-bulbed Allium cepa are frequently marketed under the same name. Also known as Welsh onions or Japanese onions, they show up in countless home gardens. The varieties listed on the next line illustrate their popularity.
- Apache
- Beltsville Bunching
- Cipollotto da Mazzi
- Crimson Forest
- Deep Purple
- Eclipse
- Evergreen (also called Evergreen Bunching, Evergreen Hardy, Evergreen Hardy Bunching, and Evergreen Spring Bunching)
- Fukagawa
- Guardsman (a bunching onion and bulbing scallion hybrid)
- Heshiko
- Ishikura
- Japanese Bunching
- Nabechan
- Nebuka Evergreen
- Pacific Pearl
- Parade
- Pearl Drop
- Red Beard
- Red Bird
- Santa Claus
- Scarlet Bandit
- Southport White Globe
- Summer Island
- Tokyo Long
- Warrior
- White Lisbon
- White Spanish
- White Spear
- Winter Over
Despite the official categories, its good to remember that the lines between these groups have blurred over time, both in conversation and in the countless online guides floating around.
In day-to-day exchanges, most people mix up the labels-scallion, green onion, spring onion-without much fuss.
Yet as gardeners we know that even small differences can tilt a growing season, so we always check that the advice we follow matches the onion on our plot. The comforting thing is that for the broad strokes-water, light, soil-most of them behave very similarly.
The main differences between them usually show up in how they grow, like whether they develop bulbs or how many days it takes until harvest. Armed with the background you now have, you can easily correct any mix-up a seed packet, website, or gardening book makes. That confidence lets you pick the right plants for your garden and know you will get the results you want.