Nice cuppa tea ....

Today I noticed my fennel, brought from the last house in a pot, is making a valiant attempt to grow through the snow. Apart from water, it doesn't take much looking after and seeds itself from its copious output.

Fennel has been used at least since Roman times as a digestive aid, especially made into refreshing tea. I like to make an infusion of one or more of its ferny leaves in hot water, easy peasy and much better than the tea bags you can buy. Also used as an appetite suppressant; in Medieival times the seeds were used as an aid to getting through fasting. The 17th-century herbalist, Nicholas Culpeper, wrote that fennel helped to make "people lean that are too fat".

Fennel is also an ingredient in the popular Chinese 5-spice blend which will go in our stir-fry tonight:-)

It has a multitude of other uses, and all parts of the plant can be used. It is said that Roman warriors wore wreaths made of the feathery leaves to give them courage before going into battle. Longfellow paid tribute in this poem:


Above the lowly plants it towers
The fennel, with its yellow flowers,
And in an earlier age than ours,
Was gifted with the wondrous powers,
Lost vision to restore.
It gave new strength, and fearless mood;
And gladiators, fierce and rude,
Mingled it in their daily food;
And he who battled and subdued,
A wreath of fennel wore.

from "The Goblet of Life,"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1842)