The hoja santa (sacred leaf), hoja de la estrella (leaf of the star), or Veracruz pepper (Piper auritum Kunth) has a native range from southern Mexico into northern South America. It is a successional plant found in moist forests where gaps in the canopy allow some sunlight to the forest floor. Although it is considered a shade-loving plant, hoja santa will not tolerate deep shade.

Hoja santa has a knobby herbaceous stem and grows up to six meters in height supporting itself with prop roots near the base of the stem. The large leaves arise alternately along the stem. Hoja santa blooms with a myriad of tiny reduced flowers arranged along a thin arching spike. The flowers consist of a pistil with a fringed stigma, two anthers, and a small peltate (umbrella-shaped) bract. The flowers are followed by a single-seeded fruit, a drupe. The seeds are dispersed by frugivorous (fruit-eating) bats.

Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland collected the first botanical specimens near Veracruz, Mexico. Hoja santa received its specific epithet, auritum "eared" from the uneven lobes at the base of the large leaves. But the leaves are best known for their aroma; when crushed they emit a scent like aniseed or root beer. The scent is due to an ethereal oil found in spherical cells within the leaf. These specialized cells are typical of the roughly 2,000 species of the Piperaceae, the pepper family.

Like its more famous Old World cousin, black pepper (Piper nigrum), hoja santa is used as a seasoning. In this case, it is the leaves and not the 'peppercorns' that flavor foods. The Maya and Aztec made tamales—fish or meat wrapped in fragrant leaves for cooking. And the ancients used many types of leaves, not just corn husks around corn meal dough and seasoned meat. Many of these ancient tamal entrees persist; pescado (fish) en hoja santa is still fine dining especially near the Gulf coast in Veracruz.

(Compiled from: "Piper auritum", Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants, R.P. Wunderlin and B.F. Hansen, Institute for Systematic Botany, University of South Florida, 2004; "Family Piperaceae", Contemporary Plant Systematics, Dennis W. Woodland, Prentice-Hall, 1991; "Piper auritum", W3Tropicos, Jim Solomon, Missouri Botanical Garden, 2004 and "From the Halls of Moctezuma: Cooking with Leaves", Karen Hursh Graber, MexicoConnect, 2004)