Star Anise

Star Anise (horse)

Star Anise is an active Japanese filly thoroughbred racehorse. She was awarded the JRA Award for Best Two-Year-Old Filly in 2025.

Illicium verum

Illicium verum is a medium-sized evergreen tree native to South China and northeast Vietnam. Its star-shaped pericarp fruits harvested just before ripening are a spice that closely resembles anise in flavor. Its primary production country is China, followed by Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries. Star anise oil is highly fragrant, used in cooking, perfumery, soaps, toothpastes, mouthwashes, and skin creams. Until 2012, when it switched to using genetically modified E. coli, Roche Pharmaceuticals used up to 90% of the world's annual star anise crop to produce oseltamivir (Tamiflu) via shikimic acid.

Star

A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by self-gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night; their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed points of light. The most prominent stars have been categorised into constellations and asterisms, and many of the brightest stars have proper names. Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations. The observable universe contains an estimated 1022 to 1024 stars. Only about 4,000 of these stars are visible to the naked eye—all within the Milky Way galaxy.

Anise

Anise, also called aniseed or rarely anix, is a flowering plant in the family Apiaceae native to the Eastern Mediterranean and Southwest Asia.

star anise

Noun

1. A plant, Illicium verum, used primarily for its starshaped seed which resembles anise in scent and flavor, and which is used as a spice.
2. The starshaped seed used as a spice.