Fennel The inflated leaf bases are eaten as a vegetable, both raw and cooked. Several cultivars of Florence fennel are also known by several other names, notably the Italian name "finocchio". In North American supermarkets, it is often mislabeled as "anise". "Foeniculum vulgare" 'Purpureum' or 'Nigra', "bronze-leaved" fennel, is widely available as a decorative garden plant. Fennel has become naturalized along roadsides, in pastures, and in other open sites in many regions, including northern Europe, the United States, southern Canada, and much of Asia and Australia. It propagates well by seed, and is considered an invasive species and a weed in
Fennel Greek name for fennel is marathon () or "marathos" (), and the place of the famous battle of Marathon literally means a plain with fennel. The word is first attested in Mycenaean Linear B form as ". As Old English ", fennel is one of the nine plants invoked in the pagan Anglo-Saxon "Nine Herbs Charm", recorded in the 10th century. In the 15th century, Portuguese settlers on Madeira noticed the abundance of wild fennel, and used the Portuguese word "funcho" (fennel) and the suffix "" to form the name of a new town, Funchal. Longfellow's 1842 poem "The Goblet