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Herb library · Spice · Pimpinella anisum

Anise

The sweet, licorice-scented seed of a small plant in the carrot family, used in breads, sweets and drinks. European regulators accept aniseed tea for mild bloating and for coughs with a cold on long use alone; a few small trials in people exist, and the essential oil is far stronger than the seed.

Traditional use

Anise came from the eastern Mediterranean and has flavored food and drink since antiquity. In European medicine the seed was a remedy for wind and colic and was added to other medicines to improve their taste; nineteenth-century American doctors gave an infusion to infants with colic. Chinese texts describe it as warming. Today it is sold as a tea for indigestion and coughs, and in teas marketed to nursing mothers.

Traditional energetics

What studies show

  • Insufficient

    Bloating, wind and coughs with a cold: the European Medicines Agency accepts aniseed tea for these on the strength of long traditional use, and says there is insufficient evidence from clinical trials; its effect is only plausible from lab studies showing it relaxes gut and airway muscle.

  • Limited

    Functional dyspepsia (ongoing indigestion with no clear cause): a 2023 Cochrane review found one trial of 107 people in which aniseed powder, 3 g after each meal for 4 weeks, may have improved symptoms compared with placebo. The certainty of the evidence was low.

  • Limited

    Breast milk supply: LactMed says few scientifically valid trials support anise for this; a meta-analysis found a small increase in milk volume on the first day after birth, and low-certainty evidence that anise tea increases volume on day 7.

Be careful of

Cautions

  • AllergyDo not use aniseed medicines if you are allergic to anise, to anethole, or to other plants in the carrot family (caraway, celery, coriander, dill, fennel). Allergic reactions affecting the skin or breathing can occur.
  • AmountFood and tea amounts are very different from the essential oil. EMA's tea dose is 1 to 3.5 g of seed in a cup of boiling water three times a day, for no more than two weeks. Swallowing 1 to 5 ml of anise oil has been linked to nausea, vomiting, seizures and fluid in the lungs.
  • ConditionChildren: EMA does not recommend aniseed medicines under 12 years (not enough safety data, partly because the seed contains estragole) and says the oil must not be taken by anyone under 18. Anise is generally recognized as safe as a food flavoring in the US.
  • PregnancyEMA does not recommend aniseed medicines in pregnancy or breastfeeding because safety has not been established. LactMed reports that heavy use of a nursing tea containing anise and other herbs appeared to poison two breastfed newborns, consistent with anethole toxicity.
  • Ask a clinicianTalk with a clinician or pharmacist before using this if you take prescription medicines, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are giving it to a child.

From the old books

What herbals and dispensaries of the past printed. History, in their words.

“Care must be taken not to confound any of the seed of the poisonous umbelliferous plants, as of the Conium maculatum, with those of the anise; a little attention will detect any accidental admixture of this kind, as the differences in the seed are well marked.”
Harvey Wickes Felter and John Uri Lloyd, King's American Dispensatory (1898), vol. 1, p. 209. See the page of King's American Dispensatory, vol. 1, p. 209 (opens in a new tab) · Read the full passage from King's American Dispensatory, vol. 1, p. 209

Sources

  1. Community herbal monograph on Pimpinella anisum L., fructus (EMA/HMPC/321184/2012) (opens in a new tab) · EMA · read September 25, 2026
  2. Herbal medicine: summary for the public — Aniseed (EMA/305345/2016) (opens in a new tab) · EMA · read September 25, 2026
  3. Community herbal monograph on Pimpinella anisum L., aetheroleum (EMA/HMPC/321185/2012) (opens in a new tab) · EMA · read September 25, 2026
  4. Anise — Drugs and Lactation Database (LactMed), NCBI Bookshelf (opens in a new tab) · NIH · read September 25, 2026
  5. Non-Chinese herbal medicines for functional dyspepsia (Cochrane Database Syst Rev, 2023) — PubMed record (opens in a new tab) · NIH · read September 25, 2026
  6. Pimpinella anisum in the treatment of functional dyspepsia: a double-blind, randomized clinical trial (J Res Med Sci, 2015) — PubMed record (opens in a new tab) · NIH · read September 25, 2026

Reviewed September 25, 2026.