Anise (Pimpinella Anisum, Linn.), an annual herb of the natural
order Umbelliferæ. It is a native of southwestern Asia, northern
Africa and south-eastern Europe, whence it has been introduced
by man throughout the Mediterranean region, into Germany, and to
some extent into other temperate regions of both hemispheres,
but seems not to be known anywhere in the wild state or as an
escape from gardens. To judge from its mention in the Scriptures
(Matthew xxiii, 23), it was highly valued as a cultivated crop
prior to our era, not only in Palestine, but elsewhere in the
East. Many Greek and Roman authors, especially Dioscorides,
Theophrastus, Pliny and Paladius, wrote more or less fully of
its cultivation and uses. Anise in Flower and in Fruit From
their days to the present it seems to have enjoyed general
popularity. In the ninth century, Charlemagne commanded that it
be grown upon the imperial farms; in the thirteenth, Albertus
Magnus speaks highly of it; and since then many agricultural
writers have devoted atte