Foeniculum vulgare var. dulce Seeds | Berfena Fennel
LATIN NAME: Foeniculum vulgare var. Dulce
COMMON NAME: Berfena Fennel, Sweet Fennel
Plant Profile
Each leaf is divided three times over, so the final leaflets are almost hair-like, and the whole canopy carries the smoky blue-green cast of the species. Crush a leaf and the scent is clean anise with a green bite, the signature of a high-estragole leaf type kept steady by selection.
The dried fruit of Berfena is fat and ribbed, and the mericarps carry a dense load of oil canals, so a given weight of seed yields more distillate than a weedy open type. That yield-per-hectare edge is the quiet reason a breeder bothers to maintain a clone at all.
Trans-anethole leads the oil, with estragole and fenchone filling in the background, the same trio found across the species but held in a tighter ratio here. The fenchone share is what keeps Berfena tasting like fennel and not like candy-anise, a difference distillers check by nose before they buy.
Treat Berfena like any seed fennel: warm soil, a firm surface, and light on the row, because the fine seed will not push through a crust. It is a short-lived perennial usually grown as an annual for leaf and a second-year crop for seed.
If you start modules, move them to the open ground at the three-true-leaf stage and water them in well; smaller plants stall and larger ones check, so the middle window is best. Give the bed full sun and a soil that drains, and Berfena will reward the patience with a single clean cutting. Cut the umbels whole on a dry afternoon once they have turned from green to grey-brown, and dry them on a screen where air moves freely, because seed dried slowly in a heap loses much of its anethole punch before it ever reaches the jar.
Science & Biotechnology
A uniform cultivar means a uniform oil, and the volatile profile of fennel swings wildly between individual plants in a mixed row, which wrecks a batch destined for food flavour. Berfena was lined up so the anethole level stays in a narrow band from the first cutting to the last, which is why it shows up in catalogues aimed at the essential-oil and seed trade rather than the flower border.
Uses & Benefits
Because the leaf is abundant and the plant is tall, Berfena is a good cut-and-come herb for the cook who wants fistfuls of foliage rather than a single bulb. The seed, being uniform, also gives a reliable spice for bread and sausage without the sour off-notes a mixed row can throw.
A teaspoon of crushed seed folded into a rustic loaf or a coarse pork sausage is the classic use, and the steady anethole level means the baker gets the same result batch after batch. The leaf, cut young, goes into fish dishes and the bright herb butter that suits grilled vegetables.
Growing from Seed
Berfena is a named fennel cultivar released from Czech selection work, and its claim to the seed trade is uniformity: every plant in the row reaches the same height, opens its umbels on the same schedule, and carries the same anise load, which matters far more to a distiller than to a home cook. Most garden fennel is a mix of seedlings that bolt at different moments, but Berfena was fixed so the whole block can be cut in one pass.
The stems are slender, hollow, and finely grooved, and under good summer heat they climb toward two metres before the umbels open. The leaf is tripinnate and thread-like, with the same sheathing base you see on any fennel, but the seedling vigour is what breeders liked: Berfena fills a bed faster than the old open-pollinated sorts.
Sow fresh and prick the seedlings out when they hold their first true pair, then again at three true leaves, setting the final stand about thirty centimetres apart. Working by leaf count keeps the row even, which is the whole point of growing a uniform cultivar in the first place.
Our Take
Berfena earns its keep only if you treat it as a crop, not a curiosity, so I sow a block I mean to cut rather than a few stray plants. Near it I like Dill Anethum graveolens and the broader-leaved Italian Parsley Petroselinum seed crispum neapolitanum, with Celery seed Apium graveolens and Fernleaf Dill seed filling out the umbellifer bed.
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