VIII 



PEPPERS 241 



first purplish or dark green, eventually attains a thick- 

 ness of ^ in., with a greyish bark. It is flexuous and 

 swollen at the nodes, from which are produced 

 numerous short roots by which it clings to a tree or 

 other support. The leaves are alternate ovate or 

 lanceolate, ending in a short point, rounded or slightly 

 narrowed at the base, smooth, dark green, paler beneath, 

 coriaceous, with four or five prominent nerves ascending 

 towards the tip ; the leaf-stalk or petiole is short, usually 

 ^ in. or less long, and at first sheathing with a narrow 

 marginal sheath which soon becomes black and falls off. 

 In size the leaves vary considerably, from 4 to 10^ in. 

 long and 2^ to 5 in. wide when fully developed. The 

 flowers, which are very minute, are borne in very slender, 

 yellowish green, hanging spikes, or more correctly 

 catkins, as the whole inflorescence when withering falls 

 off together, and the separate flowers do not fall off as 

 they do in a true spike. The catkins vary from 1 to 

 6 in. long in flower, lengthening as the fruit ripens. 

 They are borne on the nodes opposite to the leaves. 

 The . minute flowers are of very simple structure. 

 Below each is a small fleshy bract, ovate and usually 

 acute, which more or less enfolds an oval pistil bearing 

 on its top a four or five-lobed stigma. This is white at 

 first, but soon becomes brown or black. It is only 

 functionally active while it is in the white stage ; on 

 either side are two or three stamens, with a short 

 filament and a pair of minute oval pollen-sacs. In some 

 forms the bracts of different spikes contain either pistils 

 only or stamens only. In fact, the spikes are unisexual. 

 In the hermaphrodite flowers the stamens do not 

 appear till after the stigmas have become brown, i.e. are 

 withered. Until then they are immature and hidden 

 beneath the bract, so that a pistil cannot be fertilised by 

 its own stamens. 



Jn wild forms Barber 1 states that the plant is 

 unisexual, having only male flowers or female flowers 



1 "Varieties of Cultivated Pepper," Report Madras Dept. Agriculture, vol. iii. 

 56, p. 125. 



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