Piper nigrum from an 1832 print

per substitutes, such as Lepidium campestre, Lepidium virginicum, shepherd's purse, horseradish,and field Pennycress.
Region of origin[edit]
Peppercorns are often categorized by their place of origin. Two types come from India's Malabar Coast: Malabar and Tellicherry. Tellicherry comes from grafted Malabar plants grown on Mount Tellicherry.[11]
Sarawak pepper is native to the Malaysian portion of Borneo. White Muntok pepper comes from Indonesia and Lampung hails its island of Sumatra. Vietnam produces both white and black pepper in the provinces of Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu, Chu Se and Bình Phước.[12]
Plant[edit]



Piper nigrum from an 1832 print


Unripe drupes of Black Pepper (Piper nigrum) at Trivandrum, Kerala, India
The pepper plant is a perennial woody vine growing up to 4 metres (13 ft) in height on supporting trees, poles, or trellises. It is a spreading vine, rooting readily where trailing stems touch the ground. The leaves are alternate, entire, 5 to 10 cm long and 3 to 6 cm across. The flowers are small, produced on pendulous spikes 4 to 8 cm long at the leaf nodes, the spikes lengthening up to 7 to 15 cm as the fruit matures.[13] The fruit of the black pepper is called a drupe and when dried it is a peppercorn.
Pepper can be grown in soil that is neither too dry nor susceptible to flooding, moist, well-drained and rich in organic matter (the vines do not do too well over an altitude of 3000 ft above sea level). The plants are propagated by cuttings about 40 to 50 centimeters long, tied up to neighboring trees or climbing frames at distances of about two meters apart; trees with rough bark are favored over those with smooth bark, as the pepper plants climb rough bark more readily. Competing plants are cleared away, leaving only sufficient trees to provide shade and permit free ventilation. The roots are covered in leaf mulch and manure, and the shoots are trimmed twice a year. On dry soils the young plants require watering every other day during the dry season for the first three years. The plants bear fruit from the fourth or fifth year, and typically continue to bear fruit for seven years. The cuttings are usually cultivars, selected both for yield and quality of fruit.
A single stem will bear 20 to 30 fruiting spikes. The harvest begins as soon as one or two fruits at the base of the spikes begin to turn red, and before the fruit is f