314 SPICES 



CHAP. 



but possesses a perennial root stalk from which are pro- 

 duced many creeping rounded stems, which, as in all pep- 

 pers, are jointed with swollen joints. The young shoots 

 are downy. The creeping stems bear large, broadly cor- 

 date leaves, somewhat polished and showing the nerves, 

 the tip acuminate, the base with a broad and deep in- 

 dentation. The erect fruiting branches have rather 

 smaller oblong cordate leaves, with fine nerves, the upper 

 ones of which have no petioles, but are stem clasping. 

 Miquel, who figures it under the name of Chavica 

 Roxburgliiana, shows the upper leaves quite like those 

 of the lower part of the plant, and like those which I 

 have in cultivation. The plant, however, climbs readily 

 like the black pepper, and is cultivated in exactly the 

 same way in Assam and Mysore. 



The male spikes are slender, and from 1 to 3 in. 

 long ; the female spikes shorter, sessile, or nearly so, 

 opposite to the leaf, cylindrical, with a rounded base and 

 blunt at the tips, f to 1^ in. long and erect, red when 

 ripe. The flowers are very numerous and close packed 

 as in the black pepper, but the bracts are orbicular, and 

 the fruit is not a red fleshy drupe as in black pepper, 

 but a minute drupe embedded in the fleshy spike. The 

 whole spike of fruits forms a cylindric mass, broadest at 

 the base, and when dry is of a grey colour and very 

 pungent, but less so than Javanese long pepper. 



It is known as pipul in India, and cultivated from 

 mature branches or suckers. N. Mukerji (Handbook 

 of Indian Agriculture, p. 43) states that the branches, 

 shoots, or suckers are layered, i.e. bent down into the 

 ground, and when they take root they are severed from 

 the parent vine and planted out in shade, and trailed on 

 to trees. This is done at the beginning of the rainy 

 season. The base of every vine is kept scrupulously 

 clean and well manured by cow-dung cake, which acts 

 also as a mulch. Three or four years after planting the 

 vines begin to bear in the cold weather. The spikes of 

 the long pepper are dried in the sun. Mr. Basu, 

 Assistant Director of Agriculture, estimates the average 



