Illicium anisatum

The anise trees, genus Illicium, are aromatic broadleaf evergreens of the star-anise family, Schisandraceae, named from the Latin illicium, an allurement, for the spicy scent the crushed leaves give off. Illicium anisatum is the Japanese anise, called shikimi in its homeland, a glossy, upright evergreen shrub or small tree with leathery, anise-scented leaves and pale creamy-yellow, star-shaped flowers in earliest spring.

Few garden plants carry so much ceremony. In Japan the branches and evergreen leaves of shikimi are held sacred, offered at Buddhist altars, temples, and graves, and the dried leaves are ground and burned as incense, a use tied to the way insects avoid the plant and the cut foliage stays fresh. That toxicity is real: Illicium anisatum contains anisatin and related compounds and is poisonous if eaten, unlike the culinary Chinese star anise, Illicium verum, with which the plant has sometimes been dangerously confused. Grow shikimi for beauty and scent, not for the kitchen.

Uncommon in American gardens, Japanese anise has often been muddled with the native Illicium parviflorum, which has been widely sold and even mislabeled under this name in botanic gardens, though the shared anise fragrance is about where the resemblance ends. The true shikimi is a denser, glossier plant, slow and clean, building to twelve or fifteen feet in time.

Give Japanese anise a semi-shaded spot with good, moist, but well-drained soil, and the plant repays it with year-round polished evergreen structure. Use as a specimen, a screen, or an anchor in a woodland or courtyard planting, where the early flowers and aromatic leaves can be met at close range. The toxic, fragrant foliage that keeps insects and browsing deer away makes shikimi an easy, trouble-free evergreen. Ferns, hellebores, and camellias make fitting companions in the same shade.