Detailed Product Description
Star anise fruit is the ripe fruit of Illicium verum, hooker filius (N.O. Magnoliaceoe), a small tree indigenous to the southern and south-western provinces of China.
The carpels measure about 1.5 cm. in length; they are boat-shaped, and usually bluntly beaked at the apex, but nearly flat at the base, where they are attached to a short, central column proceeding from a curved peduncle. They are reddish brown and woody; externally irregularly wrinkled, internally paler, smoother, and glossy. The seed is reddish brown, smooth, shining, hard, ovoid, and slightly compressed. The hilum is conspicuous as an oval depression at one extremity. The hard, brittle seed-coats enclose a large, soft, oily kernel. Both the pericarp and the kernel have an agreeable aromatic odour and a sweet spicy taste.
The chief constituent of the fruit is the volatile oil contained in the pericarp of the fruit (about 5 per cent.) and in the kernel of the seed (about 25 per cent.).
The oil is distilled in large quantities in crude native stills by the peasants of Langson, in southern China, and brought to the ports of Hai-fong and Hong Kong for exportation. It is scarcely distinguishable from that of Pimpinella Anisum, Linne, and may be substituted for it. Its chief constituent is anethol, C10Hl2O (80 to 90 per cent.).
