Why Is There an Onion Inside This Onion?

What’s going on with this onion?

That’s what Rachel Tepper wondered last week, when the onion she thought was destined for her lazy weeknight dinner of shakshuka ending up looking like this.

Just to be safe, Tepper chucked it in the trash - and then immediately questioned that decision.

RECIPE: Cheese, Onion and Potato Pie

It turns out that onions like this aren’t unheard of.

According to Barbara A Ambrose, the associate curator in plant genomics at The New York Botanical Garden, provided an explanation.

“The white layers of the onion are actually modified leaves,” Ambrose explained in an email.

Most flowering plants, including onions, have “vegetative buds” secreted inside these leaves, which “depending on many developmental and physiological factors … will develop into whole shoots.”

That’s what happened to this onion, though it’s a relatively rare occurrence. The phenomenon could be the result of any number of things, like the amount of daylight and temperature to which the onion was exposed while it was growing in the field.

All things considered, Ambrose was sure that the strange-looking onion “would have been fine to eat.”