Plant · P-609

Anise

Pimpinella anisum

Anise is a single-season annual grown for its aromatic seed, which flavors bread, sweets and spirits like pernod and ouzo, while the young leaf has a milder, sweet aniseed taste good raw or cooked. Its flowers attract the parasitic wasps that prey on garden pests, and a boiled spray of anise seed and coriander leaf controls spider mites and aphids. It needs a long, hot summer for the seed to fully ripen - in a short season the leaf still comes in, but the seed will not fill - and it resents having its roots disturbed, so it is sown straight into the ground. It cannot grow in shade and wants full sun in fairly rich, well-drained soil.