120 FRUITS 



and Pliny ; in this country it has been in use since the fourteenth 

 century. The drug consists of the ripe fruits. 



Description. Anise fruits are greyish brown, about 5 mm. long, 

 ovoid or pear-shaped, and somewhat compressed laterally. They 

 are broad near the base, and taper gradually towards the apex, which 

 is crowned with a stylopod and two short divergent styles. The meri- 

 carps usually remain united and attached to a pedicel longer than the 

 fruit. Each mericap possesses five distinct but not prominent primary 

 ridges which are usually slightly wavy, but do not exhibit the prominent 

 crenations characteristic of hemlock fruits ; the depressions between 

 them are more or less distinctly bristly from the presence of short, 

 stout hairs. 



FIG. 66. Anise fruit. Transverse sec- FIG. 67. a, Anise fruit, 



tion indicating the position of the b, Hemlock fruit, 



vittse, not all of which (about forty in Magnified. (Vogl.) 

 each mericarp) are shown. Magnified. 

 (Moeller.) 



The vittae branch repeatedly, and the transverse section taken from 

 the middle of the fruit exhibits under the microscope from thirty to 

 forty such jbranches in each mericarp ; these, however, are so small 

 that they are scarcely visible under a lens. The endosperm is slightly 

 concave on the commissural surface, but is not deeply grooved. 



Anise fruits possess a sweet aromatic taste, and exhale, when crushed, 

 an aromatic odour. 



The student should observe 



(a) The short, stout, bristly hairs, which are sometimes in- 



conspicuous, 



(b) The united mericarps and the pedicel attached to them, 



(c) The absence of any deep groove in the endosperm, 



(d) The characteristic odour and taste, 



(e) The absence of prominent crenations on the primary ridges, 



which are themselves not conspicuous ; 



