Long Pepper

Long pepper (Piper longum), (Pippali), sometimes called Indian long pepper, is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. Long pepper has a similar, but hotter, taste to its close relative Piper nigrum - from which black, green and white pepper are obtained. The word pepper itself is derived from the Tamil/Malayalam word for long pepper, pippali.

The fruit of the pepper consists of many minuscule fruits — each about the size of a poppy seed — embedded in the surface of a flower spike that closely resembles a hazel tree catkin. Like piper nigrum, the fruits contain the alkaloid piperine, which contributes to their pungency. Another species of long pepper, Piper retrofractum, is native to Java, Indonesia.

Read more about Long Pepper:  History, Uses

Famous quotes containing the words long and/or pepper:

    Women are in bondage; their clothes are a great hindrance to their engaging in any business which will make them pecuniarily independent, and since the soul of womanhood never can be queenly and noble so long as it must beg bread for its body, is it not better, even at the expense of a vast deal of annoyance, that they whose lives deserve respect and are greater than their garments should give an example by which woman may more easily work out her own emancipation?
    Lucy Stone (1818–1893)

    Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper;
    A peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked.
    If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper,
    Where’s the peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked?
    Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers (l. 1–4)