PEPPER, Piper, a genus of plants of the natural order PipeNwea (q.v.), which once included the whole of that order; but, as uow limited, consists of plants with woody stems, solitary spikes opposite to the leaves, and covered with flowers on all sides, the flowers mostly hermaphrodite. The most important species is COMMON PEPPER or BLACK PEPPER (P. wiyrum), a native of the East Indies, now cultivated also in many tropical countries, and extensively in sonic parts of the new world; its fruit being the most common and largely used of all spices. It is a rambling and climbing shrub, with smooth and spongy stems, sometimes 12 ft. in length; and broadly ovate, acumi nate, leathery leaves. The fruit is about the size of at pea, of a bright-red color when ripe. not crowded on the spike. In cultivation, the pepper plant is supported by poles, or by small trees planted for the purpose, as it loves a certain degree of shade, and dif ferent kinds of trees are often planted for this purpose in India. It is propagated by cut tings, comes into bearing in three or four years after it is planted, and yields two crops annually for about twelve years. When any of the "berries" of a spike begin to change from green to red, all are gathered, as when more fully ripe they are less pungent, besides being apt to drop off. They arc spread on mats and separated from the spikes by rubbing with the hands or by threading with the feet, after which they are cleaned by winnowing. The black pepper of commerce consists of the berries thus dried, and become wrinkled and black; white pepper is the seed freed from the skin and fleshy part of the fruit, to effect which the dried fruit is soaked in water and then rubbed. White pepper thus prepared is of a whitish-gray color, but not untrequently undergoes a bleaching by chlorine, which improves its appearance at the expense of its quality. Black pepper is much more pungent than white pepper, tine essential constituents of the spice being more abundant in the outer parts of the fruit than in the seed. Pepper depends for its properties chiefly on an acrid resin and an acrid volatile oil; it contains also a crystalline substance called piperin. —The fruit of piper trioicum, a species very similiar to the common pepper, is more pungent; and it is cultivated in some parts of India.—The fruit of other species of piperacece is used as pepper in their native countries; that of cocobryon capense at- the cape of Good Hope; that of peltobryon lonyfolium, of artanthe erocata, of A. trichostachya, and of serronia jaborandi in South America.—
Chavka Roxburghii and C. officirturttin yield the LONG PEPPER of druggists. They have woody climbing sterns, solitary spikes opposite to the leaves, dimcious flowers, and the fruits so close together on the spikes as in ripening to become a compact mass. The spikes are gathered when unripe, and dried in the sun. They are used in pickling and for culinary purposes, also in medicine for the same purposes as common pepper. They are generally reputed to be more pungent than common pepper. C. Ro.eburghii is cultivated in Bengal, and the Circars, where it is called pippul; C. officinarum in the Dutch East Indian colonies. The root and thickest part of the stein of C. Roxburghii are exten sively used in India as a stimulant medicine; and are cut into small pieces, dried, and brought to the market under the name of pippela moola.
Pepper acts on the skin as a rubefacient and vesicant, and is often used for this pur pose m a powdered state, moistened with some kind of alcoholic spirit. It is also employed as a local stimulant in relaxation of the uvula, and is applied in the form of an ointment to ringworm. Taken into the stomach in small quantities it is a pleasant stimu lant, but in large doses it produces great pain and irritation. The quantity used. how ever, by the natives of hot climates much exceeds anything known among Europeans, and the.effects are evidently beneficial rather than injurous. The chief use of pepper is as a spice and condiment.
Pepper was known to the ancients; Hippocrates used it as a medicine; and Pliny expresses his surprise that it should have conic into general use, considering its want of flavor. In the middle ages pepper was one of the most costly spices, and in the 13th c. a few pounds of it were reckoned a princely present. The quantity now imported into Europe is immense; but there are no means of exactly ascertaining how much of the pepper of commerce is the produce of piper nigruni, or indeed of the piperacem, and how much—although certainly it is not a large proportion of the whole—is the produce of species of capsicum.
The name pepper is popularly given to substances possessing a pungency resembling that of pepper, although produeed by very different plants. Plies, CAYENNE PEPPER IS the produce of species of rapkieurn, of the natural order solanace(r; JAMAICA PEPPER (or PIMENTO) of species of Eugenia, of the natural order myrtacea; and GUINEA PEPPER, or 141Hin.r.ouErrA PEPPER. of species of the natural orders scitaminew and anonaeece. See CAPSICUM, PIMENTO, GRAINS OP PARADISE, and GULNEA PEPPER.