[2] It is also native to the UK, where it has the common names hog's fennel[3] and sulphurweed,[4] but it is a rare plant there, occurring only in certain localities in the counties of Essex and Kent.

It is a glabrous perennial with stems up to 2 m in height, solid, striate, sometimes weakly angled, sparsely blotched wine red, surrounded by fibrous remains of petioles at the base and springing from a stout rootstock.

[5] Peucedanum officinale has been known as a medicinal plant in Britain since at least the 17th century and features in the herbals of Nicholas Culpeper (in whose day it was more plentiful, for he records it as growing abundantly on Faversham marshes) and John Gerard.

The long stout taproot - 'black without and white within' and sometimes 'as big as a man's thigh', as Gerard has it - yields, when incised in Spring, a considerable quantity of a yellowish-green latex, which dries into a gummy oleoresin and retains the strong, sulphurous scent of the root.

This harvesting technique, and the product so obtained, very much recall those of two other medicinal umbellifers: Ferula assa-foetida and Dorema ammoniacum.