The battlefield of Marathon was named for fennel, and so was Madeira's capital
In Greek, fennel is marathon, so the famous battle was fought on a fennel plain. In myth Prometheus smuggled fire from Olympus inside a hollow fennel stalk, and Portuguese settlers named Funchal after the wild fennel carpeting Madeira. The same feathery herb now smothers entire hillsides in California.
Foeniculum vulgare is a hardy perennial in the carrot family, native to Mediterranean shores. Its hollow bluish stems can reach 2.1 metres, topped by flat umbrellas of 20 to 50 tiny yellow flowers, and its threadlike leaves resemble dill's but finer. The English name descends through Old French from Latin faeniculum, little hay. Its liquorice note comes from anethole, the same compound found in anise and star anise, alongside minty fenchone and other aromatic oils.
Cooks use every part. The cultivated Florence fennel, or finocchio, has swollen leaf bases forming a sweet, crisp bulb, often mislabelled anise in North American shops. The seeds flavour Italian sausage, Chinese five-spice and the Bengali blend panch phoron; in India roasted seeds called saunf are chewed after meals to freshen the breath. Syrians and Lebanese fold young leaves into an omelette called ijjeh, and the tiny wild flowers, sold as fennel pollen, are the most potent and costly form. It was also one of the three main herbs in absinthe.
Fennel has deep cultural roots. Greeks and Romans used it as food, medicine and insect repellent, and fennel tea was said to embolden warriors. Charlemagne ordered it planted on every imperial farm, and it features among the nine plants of the 10th-century Anglo-Saxon Nine Herbs Charm. A 2016 study found its essential oil can kill insects. In 2014 India grew 60 percent of the world's supply.
Escaped fennel is a different story. Spreading by seed and root crown, it has naturalised across northern Europe, North America, Asia and Australia and counts as an invasive weed in Australia and the United States, crowding out native plants for light, water and nutrients and possibly releasing growth-suppressing chemicals. On California's Santa Cruz Island it covers 50 to 90 percent of the ground. Foragers should note that some relatives in its family are poisonous and easily mistaken.
Source: Fennel
