Wild Fennel

What is wrong with wild fennel? It's a great drought-resistant plant; and has soft fern-like foliage. It's got pretty yellow flowers that attract useful wasps to the garden. It gives off a beautiful aniseed-like scent. It grows in very impoverished conditions. It's an edible herb (--but please don't mistake it for hemlock, which is a close relative that looks very similar!!!).

There's a certain rattly wooden bridge my boyfriend and I drive over, and we love it on hot summer days, because the scent of the blooming fennel wafting up is so sweet and delicate. Very nice. Like some exotic spice.

We used to observe it growing in the top end of Centennial Park, in Sydney, too, and admired its attractive yellow blooms. It's great stuff, really, and could be part of the dry climate gardener's colour pallette; just as wild chicory could be. (It's another fabulous roadside plant that is very underestimated. The blue dandelion-like rosette flowers of wild chicory also grow in very impoverished and dry roadside conditions.) I've always liked the pink blooms of wild salsify, too, but the roots from the wild plants are certainly too woody to eat as the tender root vegetable fine chefs work with.