Årringen's botanical-etymological linguistic column: – The core of the onion is not easily found. In his regular column ‘Årringens botanisk-etymologiske språkspalte’, Tor Jan Ropeid discusses linguistic, cultural, and culinary aspects of plant names. This time he takes on one of our oldest vegetables, ‘løken’ – the onion – and gives a survey of the many and diverse vernacular names for well known members of the genus Allium in Norwegian as well as many European languages.