Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Apiales > Apiaceae > Foeniculum > Foeniculum vulgare

Foeniculum vulgare (sweet fennel)

Synonyms:

Infraspecies

Foeniculum vulgare subinodorum
Foeniculum vulgare var. azoricum
Foeniculum vulgare var. dulce
Foeniculum vulgare var. piperitum
Foeniculum vulgare vulgare

Attributes

Allergen Potential [1]  Medium-Low
Edible [2]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [2]  Hermaphrodite
Hazards [2]  Skin contact with the sap or essential oil is said to cause photo-sensitivity and/or dermatitis in some people; Ingestion of the oil can cause vomiting, seizures and pulmonary oedema;
Leaf Type [2]  Evergreen
Lifespan [2]  Perennial
Pollinators [2]  Insects, Lepidoptera
Scent [2]  The dried seed is sweetly fragrant, although the fresh seed has a slightly unpleasant smell.
Structure [4]  Herb
Usage [2]  The seed yields up to 5% of an essential oil; This is used medicinally, as a food flavouring, in toothpastes, soaps, perfumery, air fresheners etc; The flavour of fennel oil depends upon its two main constituents. 'Fenchone' is a bitter tasting element whilst 'anethole' has a sweet anise-like flavour; The proportions of these two ingredients varies according to strain and region. Plants growing in the Mediterranean and southern Europe usually have a sweet oil whilst plants growing in central and northern Europe usually produce a more bitter oil; The quality of the oil also depends upon how well the seed has been dried - the oil from fully ripened and dried seeds being much sweeter and more fragrant; The dried plant is an insect repellent; The plant was formerly used as a strewing herb; Yellow and brown dyes are obtained from the flowers and leaves combined;
Height [2]  4.92 feet (1.5 m)
Width [2]  39 inches (1 m)
Light Preference [3]  Full Sun
Soil Acidity [3]  Neutral
Soil Fertility [3]  Intermediate
Soil Moisture [3]  Moist
View Plants For A Future Record : Foeniculum vulgare

Protected Areas

Ecosystems

Predators

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Derived from Allergy-Free Gardening OPALS™, Thomas Leo Ogren (2000)
♦ 2Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 3ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 4Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 5Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 6Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 7Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0