CHAPTER 8: Chives (Allium schoenoprasum)

Chives are slim green garlic-like fragrant garden herbs, used to flavour foods, and are normally consumed fresh. Useful as insect repellent in gardens, the flowers are edible, providing decoration and flavour to dishes. Chives have had limited use in traditional medicine. Chives possess a number of bioactive properties. Research from Asia, Europe, the US and South America has identified chives as possessing antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-hypertensive, anti-platelet and anti-microbial properties. There is also some suggestion in the literature of its lipid lowering effects (although this may actually concern another species – Chinese chives (Allium tuberosum)). However, the bulk of research on the bioactive properties of this herb is focussed on its chemo-preventive and anti-mutagenic properties.