Fennel at the Shakespeare Garden

Foeniculum vulgare

Being an ancient seasonal herb, fennel has been used by many cultures and appears in folklore. For instance, it is said that fennel was introduced to man by serpents and that snakes improve their eyesight by rubbing against fennel. It is also told that when Prometheus stole fire, he used a fennel stem as a torch. Milton describes fennel, “The savoury odour blown, Grateful to appetite, more pleased by sense Than smell of sweetest Fennel.” Longfellow also speaks of it in his poem, “The Goblet of Life.” When the Romans referred to fennel, it was called, “anethum foeniculum,” which means “small fragrant hay.” 

Many remedies are attributed to the various parts of fennel, from curing dropsy to being a modern day diuretic.  An old New England proverb says that “Sowing Fennel is sowing sorrow.”  The Elizabethans considered it to be an emblem of flattery.  In Hamlet there are many references to a variety of flowers that carry symbolic meanings.

The versatility of fennel makes it a great plant for culinary purposes and also for visual effect in a cottage garden. It is a flowering plant in the carrot family that can grow as tall as six feet but is generally shorter.  It is best in zones 4 – 9 and is indigenous to the shores of the Mediterranean as a hardy perennial. In cooler climates it is an annual. 

Shakespeare references to fennel:

  • Ophelia:

     “There’s fennel for you, and columbines.”

  • Flastaff:

    “Because their legs are both of a bigness, and ‘a plays at quoits well, and eats conger and fennel, and drinks off candles’ ends for the flapdragons, and rides the wild-mare with the boys, and jumps upon joined stools, and swears with a good grace, and wears his boots very smooth, like unto the sign of the Leg, and breeds no bate with telling of discreet stories; and such other gambol faculties ‘a has that show a weak mind and an able body, for the which the Prince admits him.”

  • Capulet:

    “Such comfort as do lusty young men feel

    When well-appareled April on the heel

    Of limping winter treads, even such delight

    Among fresh fennel buds shall you this night

    Inherit at my house; hear all, all see;

    And like her most whose merit most shall be;

    Which on more view of many, mine, being one,

    May stand in number, though in reckoning

    None

    Come go with me.”