Foeniculum vulgare
Cn: sweet fennel
Given my Italian & French background, I'm pretty much required to like fennel. Actually, last year while I was in the midst of teaching a garden lesson to an energetic herd of second graders, their 70 year-old and very Italian teacher inquired if the plant adjacent to me was fennel. Sure is, I told her a bit distracted. She urgently demanded I harvest her a piece, as she could hardly do so herself. Feeling a bit indifferent about the unruly plant in our East Oakland school garden, I snapped her off a stem. She immediately gnawed into the crispy piece, chewed vigorously, then bawled her eyes out. She proceeded to tell me she regularly ate fennel as a child growing up in Italy, and now the taste brought back childhood memories (I assumed they were good??). Shocked, I listened intently. She looked me in the eyes and told me that if I was Italian, I too had to like the weedy licoricey plant. I thought sure? I always was a backward child, choosing black licorice over red at the movie theater any day...
Sweet fennel, a weedy perennial herb from the Mediterranean flourishes in my neighborhood and has been used medicinally and culinarily in many parts of the world for some time. The bulbous stem, leaves & seeds are all edible, carrying an anise-like potency. Last Friday local permaculturist David Stockhausen and I traipsed around sunny Berkeley, harvesting handfuls of the wispy plant around the edges of Le Conte Elementary School.
Sweet fennel can grow up to 7 feet tall, and has very finely dissected foliage. Yellow flowers are in terminal compound umbels, with about 20-40 flowers in each umbel. HOWEVER, be very mindful when harvesting fennel, as is looks strikingly similar to poison hemlock, Conium maculatum--which is deadly poisonous! While resembling sweet fennel, poison hemlock has maroon splotches on its main stem, and is found in moist soil. When in doubt, crush some of the plant's leaves; a licorice or anise smell emerges from fennel, whereas a dead mouse smell (?) occurs with poison hemlock. BUT, be sure to wear gloves if you really do the smell test, because poison hemlock contains a toxin, coniine, which can absorb into your skin. I'd say harvest only if you're sure it's fennel--when in doubt, don't take a chance. You don't want to end up like Socrates, who died from the stuff!
With our hemlock-free fennel, David and I returned home joining friends busily cooking in the kitchen. Alexis had fennel cooking experience from her time in Italy, and so took the lead, using chopped fennel leaves in a fresh quiche. We munched on the fennel stem a bit, which can be eaten raw, sort of like an anisey celery....However, I soon found out that fennel grows vegetatively around February and March, meaning those are the months when the stem is most tender to eat. Unfortunately, by the time we'd gotten to our edible weed (mid May), the stem was a bit on the tough side--good thing the leaves are consistently sweet throughout the year!
Minutes later our fennel quiche was ready. Famished, we enjoyed every quiche crumb (I even forgot to snap a photo as the nine of us ravaged it so!). Sadly though, the fennel flavor seemed a bit lost, not as strong as intended. Next time, we're going to be sure to add plenty more leaves to get that licorice taste. I'm also interested in harvesting mountains (small mountains) of fennel seeds from around my neighborhood this Fall and baking with them. Fennel shortbread anyone? For me, this is an easy weed to enjoy--but perhaps that's just my Italian genes speaking.
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