In North America this commonly cultivated plant (garlic) may not be widely established independently of plantings, but there is a curious concentration of records in the Ozark region and lower Ohio Valley (FNA 26, K, W). In Ky. it is often impossible to infer if colls. are from persistent plantings, bulblets or truly spontaneous seedlings. Cultivated sativum has characteristically large basal bulbs, typically 3-6 cm x 3-8 cm and including ca. 5-15 cloves, which are white to light brown (the inner coats white). However, sativum-like plants have aggresively colonized several acres of roadsides and adjacent young woods on gravelly lowlands at Bernheim Forest in BULL; dispersal of bulbils may be enhanced by mowing (A. Berry, pers. comm.). These Bernheim plants have tight clusters of stems, each with a swollen base only ca. 5-10 cm wide and not compounding into multiple cloves per stem; however, these plants can produce typical garlic bulbs if cultivated with flowering stalks cut off (A. Berry, pers. comm.). The chemistry of sativum is similar to vineale and allies (see notes under vineale), but it includes higher concentrations of "alliin", a derivative of cysteine; when bulbs are crushed, enzymes convert alliin into "allicin", source of the unstable pungent smell, and other derivatives (Borlinghaus et al. 2014). Some of these derivatives in garlic, and perhaps also polyamines, are known to have significant pharmaceutical applications of diverse type (e.g. Amagase 2006).