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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-648
Star Anise
Illicium verum
Star Anise is an aromatic evergreen tree grown for its star-shaped dried fruit, a staple of Chinese five-spice that also flavours teas, liqueurs, and pickles and is chewed after a meal to freshen breath. It tolerates semi-shade well, one of the few spice trees that will crop under a canopy rather than needing open ground, but it needs lime-free, mildly acid soil to thrive. The real danger with this species is not the fruit itself but mistaken identity: its fruit is nearly impossible to tell apart from the toxic Japanese star anise, and mix-ups have caused seizures and poisoning severe enough to prompt an FDA warning against star anise teas - so knowing the exact tree a harvest came from is the whole of the safety margin.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 8–11
- Soil
- Sand · Loam
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moist
Vertical layer
Sub-Canopy- Soil pH
- 5.5–7
- Plant type
- Evergreen Tree
- Mature height
- 12–19.7 ft
- Mature spread
- 9.8–15 ft
- Plant spacing
- 9.8–15 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- None
Keep exploring
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The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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