Photo: Alex Abair, CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Yellow Anise

Illicium parviflorum

Also called yellow anisetree, swamp star-anise, Ocala anise, small anise-tree.

A rare Florida evergreen for shade and wet ground, with olive green leaves that smell of licorice when crushed and nodding pale yellow flowers.

RareEvergreenTolerates shadeHedge or screenTolerates wet soilWinter interest

Type: Shrub
Mature height: 10–20 ft
USDA zones: 6–10
Growth rate: Medium
Sun: Full, Part, Shade
Soil moisture: Average, Wet
Grows wild in: Stream banks, floodplain forests, swamps and wet flats
Native range: Florida Also recorded in 1 other state, outside its native range. See what is native in your state

Hardiness zones Find your zone by ZIP code

Yellow anise is an evergreen shrub that grows wild only along spring-fed streams and in wet hammocks of central Florida, in about 25 stands in seven counties. Unlike our Florida anise, with its dark red flowers and pointed leaves, it bears small, pale yellow flowers and blunt-tipped leaves, and it is the hardier of the two. Florida lists it as endangered, and collectors have dug plants from the wild for the nursery trade. Its leaves and pods are poisonous, so never use them in place of the star anise spice. Mass it as an evergreen screen or hedge in part shade, along a wet woodland edge or beside a rain garden.

Size, growth and what to expect

It grows at a medium pace, about a foot and a half a year in our growth estimator. It makes a dense, rounded shrub or small tree 10 to 20 feet tall and 10 to 15 feet wide, often on several trunks, and wild plants reach 23 feet. Its olive green leaves, 2 to 4 inches long, come out soft yellow-green.

Nodding, cup-shaped, pale yellow flowers about half an inch wide open in May and June, with a faint, pleasant scent. The star-shaped pods, about an inch across, ripen from late summer into October and fling their seeds when they split.

It grows wild only in central Florida, in Lake, Marion, Orange, Osceola, Polk, Seminole and Volusia counties. Its home is the banks of clear, spring-fed and seepage streams, wet hammocks, floodplain swamps and bayheads with red maple and sweetbay. NatureServe ranks it imperiled to vulnerable.

How to grow Yellow Anise

Yellow anise grows in part shade or shade, and also in sun, though it thins out in deep shade. It prefers a rich soil that stays moist, acid to slightly alkaline, and it takes wet ground. Once established it rides out dry spells. Plant it 7 feet from a wall, and set plants 5 feet apart for a screen or hedge. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant in early spring or early fall, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and mulch with leaves, clear of the stems. Ripen the pods in a paper bag, since they fling their seed. Keep the seed damp in the refrigerator for 90 days, then sow it a quarter inch deep. Seedlings appear over three weeks to five months, and untreated seed sprouts less.

Water weekly through the first two summers and in long dry spells after that. Deer leave it alone. Prune once a year to keep it dense, or train it into a small tree on a few trunks. Low branches root where they touch the ground and root sprouts come up in time, so cut them away where you want it to stop.

Each flower carries both male and female parts, and a lone plant sets some seed with its own pollen, though seed from a cross is larger. Fruit set is often low even in wild stands. No pest or disease of major concern troubles it.

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

Sources (7)

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