# Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)

**Finocchio**

**Known today as.** *Foeniculum vulgare*, seed and water.

Kind: Plant

## What did Canale use it for?

To temper the vomits of broom and ben-nut; in a julep; among the amulets (chs. 5–6, 10).

## What does modern science say?

An established traditional carminative, which is exactly its role in these recipes.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **trans-anethole**: 50–75 per cent of the oil
- **fenchone**: the bitter of bitter fennel
- **estragole**: 2–5 per cent

**Mechanism.** Anethole relaxes gut smooth muscle, which tempered Canale’s vomits, and is secreted in milk; fenchone is expectorant. The oestrogenic action is through anethole polymers in animals.

**Dose.** Safe as food; estragole limits the oil in infants, and the EMA advises against fennel tea for children under four.

**Standing.** EMA monographs (2007) for bitter and sweet fennel fruit for dyspepsia, wind, and as an expectorant; a Cochrane review found no reliable evidence for infant colic.

## What lore surrounds it?

Folkard has fennel in the wreaths “worn by victors after the games in the arena,” mixed by gladiators with their food “to increase their strength,” crowning the god Sylvanus, and strewn “across the pathway of newly-married couples.” He repeats Pliny that “serpents are wonderfully fond of this plant, inasmuch as it restores them to youth by causing them to cast their old skin,” and Gerarde's distich on the water of “Fennell, Roses, Vervain, Rue, and Celandine” that is “good to cheere the sight of eine.” The ancients believed it “made fat people grow lean,” and it was hung over doors and windows on the vigil of St. John.

Thiselton-Dyer has fennel among the plants Stowe says were placed over doors on St. John's Eve “together with green birch, fennel, orpine, and white lilies,” and sets against its honours the proverb “Sowing fennel is sowing sorrow,” adding that in Hampshire “the peasants dislike giving any away for fear of some ill-luck befalling them.” The garden fennel or love-in-a-mist is one of the devil's plants, “devil-in-a-bush.”

Grieve quotes a very old English rhyming herbal preserved at Stockholm on the adder that is hurt in the eye, for whom “Ye red fenel is hys prey,” and Pliny's twenty-two remedies, with the serpents that “sharpen their sight with the juice by rubbing against the plant.” In mediæval times fennel “was employed, together with St. John's Wort and other herbs, as a preventative of witchcraft and other evil influences, being hung over doors on Midsummer's Eve.” Charlemagne “enjoined its cultivation on the imperial farms,” and Coles in 1650 has it in drinks “for those that are grown fat, to abate their unwieldiness and cause them to grow more gaunt and lank,” the Greek Marathron coming “from maraino, to grow thin.”

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Tells that serpents eat fennel when they cast their skins, to sharpen their sight, whence its long use for the eyes.

## Sources

- Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Fennel.” As published on botanical.com.
- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Fennel.” Project Gutenberg #44638.
- Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (1889). *The Folk-lore of Plants*. Project Gutenberg #10118.
- Grieve, M. (1931). *A Modern Herbal*, “Fennel.” botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/f/fennel01.html
- EMA/HMPC (2007). *Community herbal monograph on Foeniculum vulgare Miller subsp. vulgare var. vulgare, fructus* (EMEA/HMPC/263293/2006; Revision 1, 2024).
- Badgujar, S. B., et al. (2014). “*Foeniculum vulgare* Mill: a review of its botany, phytochemistry, pharmacology, contemporary application, and toxicology.” *BioMed Research International*.

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*Fennel.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/fennel

Historical description, not medical advice.