How to Grow Star anise

Illicium verum · Also called: Chinese star anise, Badian, Ba jiao, Hoi, Anís estrellado, Sternanis, Chakra phool

A young star anise tree with glossy evergreen leaves growing in a botanical garden.

Photo: Daderot, CC0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Star anise is a tree you plant for your grandchildren. It gives nothing for about six years, is not in full bearing for fifteen, and then crops for a century. Almost all of the world's supply comes from a small area of southern China and northern Vietnam, which makes it one of the most geographically concentrated spices there is. It flavours cooking across China and Southeast Asia, it is one of the five spices in Chinese five-spice, and it is the industrial source of a compound used to make antiviral medicine, which has more than once made the price jump sharply. It is also the crop in this library where identification matters most: a closely related tree is poisonous, looks broadly similar, and has contaminated traded lots before.

Growing Star anise, Stage by Stage

1. Get the land ready — Warm, wet, sheltered, and on a slope if you have one.
2. Sow fresh seed, and plant the young tree out — The seed dies quickly. Sow it almost straight out of the fruit.
3. Weed, water and shade for the first years — Six years of looking after something that gives you nothing.
4. Wait, and shape the tree for picking — The only crop in this library measured in decades.
5. Watch for trouble — Root rot in wet ground, and things that mark the fruit.
6. Harvest the fruit before it opens — Picked green and full, not ripe and split.
7. Dry it, store it, and keep the lots apart — Sun-dried until it rattles, and never mixed with anything.

Common Problems & Troubleshooting

If you see: Stars in a lot that have more arms than the rest, or arms that are shorter, blunter, more woody and curve upwards, or that smell of cloves or turpentine rather than anise.

It likely means: A different Illicium has got into the lot. Japanese star anise and several wild relatives are poisonous, and this is how they reach people.

Do this: Set the whole lot aside and do not sell it while you are unsure.

If you see: Healthy trees several years old that have never carried a single fruit.

It likely means: Almost certainly that they are not old enough. This tree gives nothing for about six years and is not in full bearing for about fifteen.

Do this: Check the age of the planting before doing anything else, since patience is usually the whole answer.

If you see: Stars that have opened on the tree, with the arms split and the shiny seeds gone.

It likely means: They were left too long. The spice is the unripe fruit, and a fruit allowed to ripen opens and sheds.

Do this: Pick when the star is full-sized, firm and green with the arms still closed.

If you see: Drying fruit going black or growing fuzzy mould on the drying floor.

It likely means: It was rained on, or brought in damp, or spread too thick to dry through.

Do this: Spread the fruit in a single layer rather than in a heap.

If you see: A lot full of loose arms and broken stars rather than whole ones.

It likely means: Rough picking, deep sacks, or over-drying followed by rough handling. A dry star is brittle.

Do this: Pick by hand without pulling, and use a hooked pole rather than shaking branches.

If you see: A tree with yellowing leaves, thinning growth and branches dying back from the tips.

It likely means: Usually water standing at the roots. This tree wants a lot of rain and no waterlogging, which is not the same thing.

Do this: Check the drainage first, since this is the commonest cause by a wide margin.

Yield & Market Value

Growing the crop is only part of the job. The last part is knowing what a normal harvest looks like where you are, and knowing what your star anise is worth before you agree a price with anybody.

Remember It This Way

If you forget every other page of this guide, keep these lines. They are the whole crop, in order, short enough to carry in your head.

Six years to the first fruit. Fifteen to a real crop. Then a hundred years.
The seed dies fast. Sow it almost straight out of the fruit.
Shade the young trees. Full sun kills them.
Plenty of rain, but never standing water.
Grow something between the rows while you wait.
Pick it green, full and closed. A ripe star opens and sheds.
Eight arms, long and flat, smelling of anise. Count them.
Dry it in the sun, turn it, bring it in at night.
Dry until it rattles and an arm snaps.
Label every lot. Never mix in fruit you did not grow.

Test Yourself: Identification

What does the tree look like?

How do you know it is true star anise?

What does the crop look like while it is drying?

Honest Limits of This Guide

Timings here are given by season and by the age of the tree rather than in named months, because star anise is grown in both hemispheres. Count from your own rains.
This is a serious safety matter and this guide treats it as one. Japanese star anise (Illicium anisatum) and several wild relatives are poisonous, look broadly similar and have contaminated traded lots. The counting and smelling test described here is a field check that helps, not a laboratory test, and a lot you are unsure about should be checked properly rather than sold.
There is no photograph here comparing true and Japanese star anise fruit side by side, because no usable picture of that comparison is available under a licence this library can use. The difference is described in words instead, which is less good and is said plainly rather than hidden.
Yield figures describe mature plantings in southern China and northern Vietnam, where nearly all of this crop is grown. A planting anywhere else is genuinely untested over the fifteen years it takes to find out.
There is no photograph here of the tree in flower, of fruit on the branch, or of picking, because usable pictures of that work are not available under a licence this library can use.
No varieties are named here. Planting material in the producing districts comes from known local mother trees rather than from named varieties, and keeping a record of which tree yours came from matters more than a variety name would.
No chemical treatments are named here. The fruit is eaten and commonly brewed as a tea, and what is permitted differs by country and by buyer.

Sources

GBIF Backbone Taxonomy species-match record for Illicium verum Hook.fil. — Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Copenhagen (source)
EPPO Global Database — Illicium verum (EPPO code ILLVE) — European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO), Paris (source)
Illicium verum — CABI Compendium datasheet — CABI, Wallingford (source)
FAO guidance on establishing and managing tree spice crops — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome (source)
FAO guidance on post-harvest handling and drying of spices — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome (source)

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