A friend told us that he had a lot of fennel growing in his garden, and that we were welcome to come and pick whatever we wished.
When we pulled up a plant, we found that there was no bulb. The bottom looked something like a horseradish. We didn't have any real use for it without the bulb, so we just took the one plnat to plant in our own garden, in case we ever run low on fennel seeds or want to skewer some whole fish for grilling.
But this is what we got, I think.
Live and learn. My expectation, if someone offered me fennel, would have been the same as yours.
Fennel confuses me as well. I think it has something to do with fennel being the same thing as dill although not really, I don't think.
Florence Fennel is a vegetable that is sometimes called bulbing fennel.
Sometimes called Anise or Finocchio.
Right -- anise! I knew that there was yet another name to confuse us, because 'normal anise' is certainly not the same as star anise.
I'm going to assume that the wild fennel in your neck of the woods is like what we have. The bulb-y ones are specific cultivars that have been bred so they have these swollen leaf bases that are eaten as a vegetable. The wild stuff doesn't have that. They are both the same species.
A current hot foodie trend is fennel pollen
The Florence fennel, to get seed ask for....
(Foeniculum vulgare Azoricum Group; syn. F. vulgare var. azoricum)
PS...there might be seed savers in your area.
Arbon, there's a young woman not far from us who grows organic vegetables, including bulb fennel. But she charges $35 pesos Mexicanos a bulb. I was hoping to score some free fennel, but, alas!
Saw some fresh fennel bulbs on sale at the local Tesco supermarket grocery for a very modest price of USD2 per bulb.
Fennel seeds(jintan manis) are regular spice ingridents in local Malay/Indonesian curry dishes and almost always used together with cloves.
Indian "garam masala" spice mix as well as "Chinese 5 Spice powder" will also include fennel seeds.
Do you think if you pruned a fennel plant regularly it would form a bulb? Just thinking of other things like asparagus you're supposed to chop back. Although if they are very different plants I guess this isn't a solution. I like both though - I can hugely recommend barbequed slices of bulb fennel.