Bronze fennel is an ornamental cultivar of common fennel, Foeniculum vulgare. The new foliage is a beautiful, smokey bronzy purply color, but in every other way it looks and behaves like the everyday variety. It is easy to grow, attracts beneficial insects and butterflies, and you can cook with it! (The leaves are great with fish or beans and the seeds are used in baking.) Here, it is a larval host plant for the Anise Swallowtail Butterfly, and our fennel plays host every year. It's great fun to watch the process; Last year, we got to watch one emerge from the chrysalis.

Fennel is naturalized in this area, and disturbed areas are often lined with plants. So it is adapted to a Mediterranean climate, with mild wet winters and dry summers. It also likes sharp drainage. It is an easy winter sower and also direct sows very well. I have not grown dill, but I would assume that if dill does well for you, so would fennel.

Forgot to mention that it is a long-lived perennial here but would probably be treated as an annual in your zone.

Bronze Fennel is supposed to be hardy to zone 4.

I heard it gets six feet tall, but this is my first year growing it and I don't know if that info is true, just passing it along.

Lime

It is a beautiful plant. Smells good too.
Beware: it has tap roots, reseeds prolifically and is very difficult to remove because of the tap roots.

It does get to be 6 feet tall. Mine get whacked back to the ground in the fall and are 6 feet tall again, come summer.

It can get huge but if you have swallowtail caterpillars they'll eat most of it. I have no idea if it comes back from the roots or just reseeds here but I always have a good supply growing in the butterfly garden and haven't planted any in years.
Karyn

If you look closely at this picture of Bronze Fennel you will notice no feathery leaves like it should have and you will also see a bunch of caterpillars feasting. This particular fennel was well over the 6ft mark and plays host to swallowtail butterfly caterpillars all summer. At one point I was sure they were going to kill the plant because they stripped it so clean but after a slight rest period the plant came back and so did the caterpillars. I could not be without it.....

Lynne
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Love that picture, Lynne! Before GardenWeb, I would have been =:-0 and flicking those "grubs" into the street, but now I'd be :-).

This is my first year with bronze fennel rec'd in trade; it germinated fine but has not gotten more than 5 inches tall. Not sure what happened, but at least it's still alive so all is not yet lost. There's probably enough for a snack for one swallowtail right now. ;-)

Terri

Another fan of Bronze Fennel. I had it in two areas of my yard and it did get to be over 6ft in some places. I never had many caterpillars on it though. I think I saw a few one year. It did reseed for me, but it was growing in a crowded perennial bed that bordered driveway and lawn, so it really wasn't bad at all. Guessing less than three dozen seedlings in the entire bed. We took everything out of that bed including the Bronze Fennel and what we couldn't pull we cut to the ground and covered with cardboard and thick mulch. It didn't come back, except a few little seedlings along the rock edging that bed. Seedlings were easy to pull out. I LOVE the fragrance and collecting the seeds is a very pleasant task because of it. I do miss it and will probably try it again some time.

:-)

My friends have it in S. Michigan, in the lake effect snow region, & it's at least 5' tall & comes back every year. It is a beautiful plant. I'm getting seed this fall!
Maggie

I love bronze fennel. The color and texture of the foliage are very oramental. For me it is a bienial or short lived perenial. It reseeds it's self readily. I find it is easy to get rid of the extra seedlings--I just need to remind myself not to get rid of them all so that I will have replacement plants each year. Mine get about 5' tall.