Hi there, I'm interested in Bronze Fennel since I won't grow milkweed and fennel is safe and edible, let me know what we can trade, thanks. Love butterflies. Bea

Thanks again, Annaneaves! You may have saved my horses' lives! I've searched for 2 days & found nothing - but that's how I found this awesome gardenweb forum. I was going to go ahead & get the hay for my horses (since my hay man thought it'd be ok), when I saw you answered my post. Now I know dog fennel is highly toxic to the liver & can even be fatal to humans who eat meat or milk from a cow who's consumed it! You're an angel - Bless you! Therese :) Here is a link that might be useful: killerplants.com

hmm... they will probably. I think you should plant extras just in case.

Nice pic, Sherry! I think I have the same type of fennel that you have. It's not totally bronze but there is some bronze on parts of the plant. It has been coming up every year for at least the past five years. I love the smell of it, and we have black swallowtails lay on it here. They've laid/ovisposited on that this year and on the parsley and the rue. I had taken out the rue a few years ago because I was allergic to it, but then I had some rue plants come up later and somehow I couldn't bring myself to rip them out. So now I have rue again. Now my daughter gets cats off the rue and brings in rue cuttings for the BST and GST cats so I don't have to touch it. She has mostly taken over doing almost all of the butterfly raising. I'm still confused about what kind of fennel this is at our place but I call it bronze fennel. All I know is that if I don't deadhead it each year, I would end up with lots of fennel plants coming up the following spring. I have mine in pretty much shade and that seems to work well to keep it from konking out earlier than I want it to. I like the plant but because the rue has more substantial foliage than the fennel, we/she usually end up raising the blacks on the rue. I wanted to raise the giants on the wafer ash trees that I planted for them here, but that doesn't last long because those darn potato leaf hoppers decimate the leaves even before the middle of summer. They're unusable now for the past couple of months because of those pests. So the giants are raised on the rue, but it's no problem for me since DD raises them. The giants prefer to lay their eggs on the wafer ash though, so maybe it would be okay to raise them on it, I don't know. Those trees are really unsightly though. I wish you much success at your new place. It looks like you don't need me to say that though. ;-) Cathy