White Hawk

Despite the name, White Hawk is not a white-spear asparagus. It is named for a leucistic red-tailed hawk that nested for years at the Colorado site where the parent plant grows. Andy Hahn, a collaborator of the Experimental Farm Network, selected it from a single feral plant near an old homestead that produces large spears in the middle of an open, dry field with no supplemental water, where feral asparagus in that region normally needs hedgerow shade and moisture to persist. EFN offers it as an open-pollinated seed selection, explicitly labelled a botanical sample and not germination-tested, rather than a finished commercial cultivar, and notes each seedling is genetically unique. EFN steers growers with very cold winters toward White Hawk instead of UC-157 F2. Because the mother plant seldom sets much seed, offerings are irregular and may not repeat.