December 15, 2009
A few posts ago, I told you that star anise is interesting because it belongs to a group of plants that split from the rest of the other flowering plants early on, and that for a long time, scientists felt plants like these retained a lot of the features of the first flowers.
Scientists think that [...]
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November 15, 2009
Plants have been getting short shrift around here lately. It’s time to fix that.
Sitting in the spice rack of many an Asian home, and a very few American homes, is the unusual looking fruit of an ordinary-looking plant with an unexpected use. Here is that plant:
And here is its fruit:
The plant is star anise, Illicium [...]
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