This plant looks like
bulbous celery at the bottom, is
feathery like
dill at the top, and tastes like
licorice, kind of. Its
stems are a vegetable and its seeds are a
spice, which taste and look like
anise seeds, only
milder and
plumper. The stems are good roasted with
root vegetables.
Roasted fennel seeds are often offered in India as an after-dinner mouth freshener and digestive.
Tom's of Maine has a fennel toothpaste, which has a purple stripe on the tube but is in reality (like most toothpaste) white. I vacillate between believing that it is good and believing it is foul. Definitely worse with orange juice than any minty toothpaste.