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Eating wild fennel?

Submitted by Robert Daeley on Wed, 2006-05-31 22:49.

Tammara over at blogging.la has posted a keen story about whether or not you can just pick and eat roadside/trailside Wild Fennel here in SoCal:

So I did some research and alas, it’s a different variety that we toss in salads and stew with tomatoes to make a yummy sauce. Our hillside weed is too woody to do anything other than flavor the food. It’s great for using as a bed to grill fish and other vegetables to impart that smoky anise flavor. In the summer when the thing flowers, you can take a paper bag, put it over the flowerhead and tap it a couple of times to get pollen. Use the pollen as a spice on fresh zucchini and just about anything else. It’s a taste that will really send you.

Good to know! By the way, if you see one of these plants on the side of the trail —

Nightshade bloom

or one of these —

castor seed pods

do not under any circumstances give them a taste. :)

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fennel

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2006-06-01 15:09.

I read once that the wild fennel (Hollywood is full of it, unfortunately, as it’s an invasive) came with immigrants who were cooking with it. It looks just like the herb I was growing in my garden. I say we do more research.

Fennel

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2006-06-01 15:17.

http://www.lacnps.org/invasive.html

The California Native Plant Society lists Foeniculum vulgare as the invasive that Tammmara seems to be referring to. That is the same as listed in GardenGuides.com as the helpful herb.

http://www.gardenguides.com/herbs/fennel.htm

which is not to say that the stuff growing all over LA is not too woody to use well. Might depend on how good a rainy season we had, or how much water it gets.