Garlic chives (Allium tuberosum), also called Chinese chives, Chinese leek, nira in Japan and buchu or gau choy across Korea and southern China, are a flat-bladed allium grown and eaten as a green vegetable rather than a mere garnish. Unlike the round, hollow leaves of common chives, the blades are solid, strappy and grass-like, and their flavour is unmistakably garlicky — a sweet, green, mildly pungent taste that sits between a chive and a soft clove of garlic. Whole handfuls are chopped into dumpling and potsticker fillings, folded into egg, stir-fried with pork or squid, tucked into Korean buchujeon pancakes, and simmered into soups; the plant is a foundational green of Chinese, Korean, Japanese and much of Southeast Asian cooking. The flower stalks (flowering chives) and the pale, sun-blanched leaves (yellow chives) are sold and cooked as their own prized forms of the same plant.