PEPPER TREE, a tree which has no proper connection with the true pepper (Piper), and is really a member of the family Anacardiaceae, being known botanically as Schinus Molle, from the Peruvian name Afulli. It is a native of tropical South America and is grown in the open air in the south of Europe. Introduced into California, it became widely popular as an ornamental tree, but later it was found to be a host plant for scale insects very destruc tive to orange orchards, with the result that in citrus districts the trees were cut down and further plantings discouraged. It is a small tree with unequally pinnate leaves, filled with volatile oil stored in large cells or cysts, which are visible to the naked eye and appear like holes when the leaf is held up to the light. When the leaves are thrown upon the surface of water the resinous or oily fluid escapes with such force as violently to agitate them. The flowers are small, whitish, arranged in terminal clusters and polygamous or unisexual, with five sepals, as many petals, ten stamens (as large as the petals in the case of the male flower, very small in the female flower, but in both springing 4from a cushion-like disk surrounding the base of the three-celled ovary).
The fruit is a small, globose, pea-like drupe with a bony kernel enclosing a single seed ; its fleshy portion has a hot aromatic flavour from the abundance of the resin it contains. The resin is used for medicinal purposes by the Peruvians, and has proper ties similar to mastic. The very similar Christmas-berry-tree (S. terebinthifolius), native to Brazil, with stiffer, less pendu lous branches, more densely clustered flowers and smaller, bright red fruit, is sparingly planted for ornament. The Japan pepper tree is Zanthoxylum piperitum the fruits of which have also a hot taste. Along the Riviera the tree known as Melia Azedarac/i or the "Pride of India," is sometimes also incorrectly called the pepper tree.