The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks (35 page)

HYSSOP

Hyssopus officinalis
lamiaceae (mint family)

T
his blue-or pink-flowered mint, also called herb hyssop, is native to the Mediterranean and is an ingredient in absinthe, herbal liqueurs, and natural cough medicines. In spite of its popularity in licorice-flavored liqueurs, chemical analysis shows that it actually has more camphor-and pine-flavored components. Extracts can cause seizures in large quantities but are considered safe in the kinds of low doses used in spirits.

LICORICE

Glycyrrhiza glabra
fabaceae (bean family)

T
his small, southern European perennial is actually a type of bean, but unlike most beans, it reaches only two or three feet tall and doesn't form a vine. The root is the part of the plant harvested for its flavor. In addition to anethole, it contains high levels of the natural sweetener glycyrrhizin, which can cause high blood pressure and other dangerous conditions in large quantities. Licorice is used in cigarettes to mask harsh flavors and retain moisture, and in candies and liqueurs.

STAR ANISE

Illicium verum
schisandraceae (star-vine family)

S
tar anise is the fruit of a small Chinese evergreen tree related to the magnolia. The star-shaped fruits, which are harvested while unripe and allowed to dry in the sun, form five to ten points, each containing a single seed. The oils are concentrated not in the seeds themselves but in the star-shaped shell, called a pericarp. The oil is easier and less expensive to extract from star anise than it is from anise, so star anise is more widely used in pastis and herbal liqueurs. In recent years, however, as much as 90 percent of the world's harvest of star anise has been purchased by the pharmaceutical industry to make Tamiflu, a drug used to combat flu pandemics.

The trees grow in China, Vietnam, and Japan. Japanese star anise (
Illicium anisatum
), a close relative, is severely toxic and has poisoned people who picked it by mistake, so it would be unwise to harvest this one in the wild.

SWEET CICELY

Myrrhis odorata
apiaceae (carrot family)

C
icely leaves and stems contain enough anethole to make them a useful licorice-flavored ingredient in aquavit and other spirits. Like other members of the carrot family, it is a feathery-leaved perennial with white umbel-shaped flowers. Although it is sometimes called British myrrh, it is not to be confused with the tree called myrrh from which a powerful resin is extracted.