The onion question

Presented without comment: A girl - young, but not a kid, maybe 18 or so - asked me in the store today where to find the onions. "Um, I imagine up front with the vegetables," I said (thinking that it's possible she might be talking about minced onions or something like that). "Oh ok - I've been all over the store," she said, and turned around and went toward the produce section.

(Note that I WOULD comment, but I can't really think of anything funny and/or clever, or even just particularly interesting, to say about it. So I'll let it stand on its own.)

But now I am looking at Wikipedia trying to decide if onions are actually a vegetable or not. I think not, but I don't see that that (long) article says so one way or the other. (Although it does mention "vegetables" at one point rather than "other vegetables" so I suppose that's a clue.) Genus Allium, I knew that part, and allium is a flowering plant, so I guess... not a vegetable? Feel free to weigh in!

Aaand... in that way that tends to happen with Wikipedia, I went from the onion article to the one about Asparagales. That's an order name I haven't heard before; I think back a few years ago when I got on my big plant-cultivating kick, they were still putting onions in Liliales. So that's interesting - to me at least!

By "the store" I mean Wal-Mart, as it happens - not where I usually buy my groceries or where I shop often at all, these days. But I needed paper and that was the closest place I could think of that was likely to sell it to me at a not-utterly-ridiculous price. And come to think of it, given that, I hope the poor girl didn't mean "all over the store" literally - I was just imagining her looking in, y'know, the bread aisle or something, not hardware. That would be very sad.

(Yeah, ok, so that may be a comment after all. Hush.)


(And come to think of it, why have I never considered the topic of onions/vegetables before? Whether tomatoes are a vegetable comes up all the time (no) - so why does nobody ever mention onions?)