Anise hyssop
A North American prairie mint with a clean anise scent, infused on the northern Plains and now common in European herb gardens. It is neither anise nor hyssop, and TeaHQ holds separate records for both of the plants it borrows its name from.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Agastache foeniculum
- Family
- Lamiaceae
- Part used
- Leaf, Flower
- Origin
- North-central North America — the northern Great Plains and the southern edge of the boreal forest
- Drunk in
- Great Plains, Manitoba, Minnesota, Europe
Character
Sweet anise over a mint base with a soft liquorice finish and very little bitterness. Rounder and less sharp than peppermint, and less austere than the hyssop it is named after.
Notes: anise, liquorice, mint, basil
History
Infused by peoples of the northern Plains and the Great Lakes, including the Cree, and later adopted as a garden and beekeeping plant across North America and Europe. The honey is a named regional product in parts of Canada and the northern United States, and the plant is now grown for bees more often than for the cup.
How it is drunk
Mostly a garden drink: it is infused from fresh or home-dried material far more often than bought, and it appears in herb-garden tisane blends across Europe and North America. Where it is sold it is usually part of a mix rather than a single-plant packet.
Production
Leaves and flower spikes are cut in bloom and shade-dried. The aroma survives drying unusually well for a soft mint, which is why the dried material is worth having at all — most mints in this family lose far more.
Preparation
Infusion · Blended with tea
Herbal infusion (tisane)
1–2 g/100 ml · 90–95 °C · 5 min
Category-typical practice rather than a measurement for this specific botanical. Most infusions are far more tolerant of a long steep than tea is.
What gets confused
Hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis) is a Mediterranean plant with a bitter camphorous character. Anise (Pimpinella anisum) is an umbellifer seed. This is a third plant borrowing both names and related to neither. Agastache rugosa, Korean mint, is a closely related Asian species used in much the same way and is often sold under the same English name.
Common mistakes
- Assuming it behaves like hyssop. It is far sweeter and much less bitter.
Evidence for this page
This page is TeaHQ synthesis throughout. No external source stands behind any statement on it, including the botanical name. 132 of the 204 botanicals have had their names and distribution checked against a taxonomic authority and this is not one of them.
Brewing parameters here are typical practice for the category rather than measurements of this plant, and each set says so.
This page makes no safety claim. It describes what Anise hyssop is, where it comes from and how it is prepared — not what it does to a person. The absence of a safety note here is not a statement that the plant is safe. How TeaHQ handles this.