Fennel

Lately, I've been on a fennel kick with cooking, and I find it most enjoyable with salmon. The mellow licorice flavor is a delightful balance to the sweet richness in salmon. The local grocer does not always have a trustworthy supply of it, so when they have it, I jump on it. The flowers of fennel, which you won't see at the grocery store, are a sort of canary yellow with a hint of green. The flowers produce in small clusters (umbels) much like hydrangea looks, but technically different and not as symmetrical. The individual flower is the shape of an overinflated innertube, pushing it into a starlike pattern. This is one of those flowering plants that would be a wonderful addition to the garden or flowerbed where one could get full well-rounded use as decor in the garden to vegetable on the dinner table.