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.