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Benefits |
Preparation |
Medicinal Uses |
Side Effects |
Plant |
Folklore |
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| Common Names |
| Fennel , Sweet Fennel, Fenkel |
| Botanical Name |
| Foeniculum vulgare |
| Family |
| APIACEAE or UMBELLIFERAE Carrot Family |
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Fennel is best known as a culinary herb, all parts of the plant are edible. Fennel not only improves digestion, but also can reduce bad breath and body odor that originates in the intestines. The fresh stems of fennel can be eaten much like celery, the seeds add a lovely anise flavor to fish and other dishes. Fennel also acts as an excellent digestive aid to relieve abdominal cramps, gas and bloating.
If you expect to eat a vegetable that you have trouble digesting, like cabbage, try adding fennel seeds to your recipe. The Greek name for fennel was marathon was derived from "maraino", to grow thin, reflexing the widely held belief that drinking fennel tea would have a slimming effect. Drinking a cup of fennel seed tea before eating a heavy meal can edge off of your appetite as well, and works in this regard for me personally.
The uses for fennel go far beyond the kitchen however, fennel has been used as a medicinal herb by the early Romans and Greeks.
Fennel teas are useful for chronic coughs and act as an expectorant to help clear mucus from the lungs, syrup prepared from fennel juice was formerly given for chronic coughs. Oil of fennel relieves muscular or rheumatic pains and is warming and soothing in massage oil blends. Women may also benefit from the estrogenic properties of fennel.
Fennel is one of the plants that repels fleas, and the anise like taste may be more acceptable choice for indigestion and gas in finicky dogs and cats. |
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Prep Methods :Herbal infusion: 1 cup boiling water poured over a teaspoon of bruised seeds.
Essential Oil: Add a few drops of fennel to blends or diffusers.
Culinary: All parts of fennel are edible.
 Remedies using Fennel
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 Sweet fennel oil has a very sweet, earthy, anise-like aroma due to its primary constituent, anethol. Sweet fennel contains more anethol than bitter fennel oil. It has a balancing effect on the female reproductive system and increases the flow of body energy. |
 If you expect to eat a vegetable that you have trouble digesting, like cabbage, try adding fennel seeds to your recipe |
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| Abdominal cramps, gas and bloating | | Fennel is useful to relieve abdominal cramps, gas and bloating. One of the best digestive aids, the seeds can be used in cooking, or made into a tasty licorice tea. 335
(Dawson,Adele ) | | Menopause - Hormone balance | | Extracts of fennel have estrogenic properties that may benefit women going through the hormonal imbalances caused by menopause. 749
| | The fresh stems of fennel can be eaten much like celery, the seeds add a lovely anise flavor to fish and other dishes. 751
| | Fleas | | It is one of the plants which is said to be disliked by fleas, and powdered Fennel has the effect of driving away fleas from kennels and stables. The plant gives off ozone most readily. 1208
(Grieve, Maude ) | | Coughs | | Syrup prepared from Fennel juice was formerly given for chronic coughs. Fennel helps clear mucus from the lungs 1209
(Grieve, Maude ) | | Muscle pain | | Oil of fennel relieves muscular or rheumatic pains 616
(White,Linda B., M.D. ) | | Appetite suppressant | | Fennel seed tea has an ancient reputation as a appetite suppressant that holds up today. Try drinking a cup 30 minutes or so before meals to take the edge of hunger pains. 748
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| Side Effects: |
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| Fennel has virtually no side effects when used as a food, or as a seed tea. The essential oil should be avoided in pregnant and nursing mothers. |
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Koehler's Medicinal-Plants 1887
 Fennel looks very much like dill with it's feather leaves and yellow umbel flowers and hollow stems. You can tell them apart instantly though- the aromatic tang of dill evokes the pickles that were named for it - while fennel has the fragrance of anise, or licorice.
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 Fennel is native to Europe and is a garden plant in North America. A member of the parsley family, the plant resembles dill with its small clusters of upturned yellow umbrel flowers, but it easily distinguished by its sweet licorice aroma and taste. The Romans and the Greeks cultivated it and Pliney gave 22 uses for it. A tall wispy perennial it earns a place in any well stocked herbal garden not only for it's culinary uses but also as one of the best digestive aids that also relieves gas. As early as the tenth century A.D. the mystic Hildegard of Bingen recommended fennel seeds as a treatment for body odor. At Indian restaurants you may see fennel seeds instead of after dinner mints. |
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 One good old fashion is not yet left off, viz . to boil fennel with fish; for it consumes that phlegmatic humour which fish most plentifully afford and annoy the body with, though few that use it know wherefore they do it; I suppose the reason of its benefit this way is, because it is an herb of Mercury, and under Virgo, and therefore bears antipathy to Pisces. Nicholas Culpeper |
 In medieval times, Fennel was employed together with St. Johns Wort and other herbs, as a preventative of witchcraft and other evil influences, being hung over doors on Midsummers Eve to warn off evil spirits |
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Annies Remedys
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