Star Anise.
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In my Report for 1886 I stated that the small plants which had been obtained in 1883 had pro- duced flowers which had shown the plant to be referrable to Illicium cambodiense. However since then a plant which was sent to Kew has produced flowers and fruit in that establishment and that material has shown the plant to be of a species not before known and Sir JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER has given it the name of Illicium verum. In the July Number of the Botanical Magazine the plant was figured, and an interesting account which was prepared by Sir JOSEPH HOOKER accompanied the figure. As this is a question of considerable interest in the Far East I give, for the benefit of those to whom the Bota- nical Magazine is not accessible, the account as it appeared.
"The plant producing the true Star Anise of China is here for the first time figured and described. "For many years the fruit so called was supposed to be that of Illicium anisatum, Linn. (see Benth. "and Trimen, Med. Pl. vol. I. t. 10), the Skimmi of Japan, or of I. religiosum, Sieb-and Zucc. (Tab. "nost. 3965), supposed to be a native of China, but which is identical with 1. anisatum of Linnæus "and Loureiro. For an account of this plant, its history and characters, I must refer to Baillons "learned treatise, published in 1867, in his Adansonia (vol. viii. p. 1), and to papers by the late Dr. "HANCE and Dr. BRETSCHNEIDER in the China Review (vol. ix. p. 283, &c.) It suffices here to “observe that I. anisatum or religiosum are species with peduncles bracteate at the base, and long 'spreading inner perianth-segments, and that they hence belong to a different section of the genus "from I. verum.'
"The first person to recognize the fact that neither I. anisatum of Linnæus or of Loureiro could "be the true Star Anise of China was Dr. BRETSCHNEIDER, then Medical Officer to the Russian Embassy at Pekin, who drew attention to the fact that the Japanese plant was a reputed poison; and that this had "been confirmed by T. F. EYKMAN, who in a paper published in 1881 in the Mittheilung der Deutsche "Gesellschaft für Naturund Völkerkunde Ost-Asien (Heft xxiii. 23) had experimented with and given "the name of Skimine to the poison. But the first definite information regarding the true Star Anise "is contained in a letter addressed to me by the late Dr. HANCE in October, 1881, which contained "seeds of the true plant received that morning from Pakhoi in South China. And in the same year "Mr. FORD of the Hongkong Botanical Gardens sent to Kew, fruit and fragments of the leaves of the "true plant from Pakhoi. In his Report on the Hongkong Botanical Gardens for 1882, Mr. FORD "states that Mr. KOPSCH, Commissioner of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs at Pakhoi, had "obtained for him a few seedlings of the true Star Anise, of which three had survived, and had attained "a height of nine feet in 1886, and flowered in the Botanical Gardens. He adds that they prove to "belong to an entirely different species from I. anisatum and all other described species. In 1883 Mr. FORD sent living plants to the Royal Gardens, Kew, which flowered in November, 1887, and it "is from one of these that the figure here given was drawn. In 1886 Mr. FORD sent dried specimens "from his nine feet high plant."
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"There are several species of the genus Illicium to which I. verum is more nearly allied than to "I. anisatum, all having globose flowers, but all differing from verum in the increased number of "perianth-segments, stamens and carpels; these are the Indian I. Griffithii, H. f. and T., and I. majus, H. f. and T., respectively from the Khasia Mountains in Eastern Bengal, and the mountains of "Tenasserim, and the I. cambodianum, HANCE (in Trimen's Jour. Bot. 1876, p. 240, I. cambogianum, Pierre, Flore Forestière Cochin-Chine, t. 4). The latter, a broad-leaved species with long-peduncled flowers, is a native of the Elephant Mountains in Cochin-China. From all these I. verum differs, not only in the number of parts of the flower, but as Mr. HOLMES (Conservator of the museum of the "Pharmaceutical Society) who has been so good as to examine them all for me, informs me, in taste of foliage and fruit, by which alone he could distinguish them, and pronounce I. verum to be specifically "distinct from all others."
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"With regard to Loureiro's I. anisatum from South China, under which he cites Linnæus and the Japanese Skimmi of Kampfer, it is altogether a doubtful plant. It is described as having yellow "flowers, a six-leaved calyx, spreading corolla and thirty stamens, and hence cannot be I. verum."
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"In his "Notes on Botanical questions connected with the export trade of China," printed at Pekin 1880, Dr. BRETSCHNEIDER calls attention to a Report by Mr. PIRY on the trade of Pakhoi for 1878-9, "which contains interesting particulars regarding the Star Anise. Of this he says it is brought to that 'port for exportation from the province of Kuangsi via Kin-Chow, and that it is produced in two districts, Lung-Chow on the borders of Annam, and Po-se in the West (or Canton) river close to "Yunnam."
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"The Star Anise was, according to Hanbury (Pharmacographia, ed. 2, p. 22), first brought to "Europe by the voyager Candish about the year 1588, and first described by Clusius (Rarior Plant. "Hist. p. 202) in 1601 from fruits procured from London. It seems afterwards to have been imported "via Russia (and bence called Cardamomum siberiense, or Annis de Siberie), and was used by the "Dutch in the seventeenth century to flavour beverages. From China it is exported into Eastern "Turkestan under the name of Chinese fennel, and in China itself it is called Pa-Kio-nui hiang, or "eight-horned Fennel; the fact being that though commonly compared with aniseed, the taste is really "more like that of fennel; so that the name given it by Redi (Experimenta, p. 172) in 1675 was "Fœniculum sinensis. In China the Star Anise is employed as a condiment and as a spice, and it is "still used to flavour spirits in Germany, France (where it is the flavouring material of Anisette de "Bordeaux) and Italy. In England, according to Hanbury, it is used only as a substitute for oil of anise."