CAPSICUMS 361 



from each bifurcation, thin, lanceolate, long-petioled, 

 the lowest the biggest. Flowers, two or three together 

 in the bifurcations, erect on slender stiff pedicels, ^ in. 

 or 1 in. long, the tip decurved, calyx cup -shaped, 

 truncate, with five very small teeth, green. Corolla ^ 

 in. across, rotate, with a short tube ; the lobes, five, cut 

 half-way down, acute, white. Stamens five, inserted on 

 the tube, short, erect, anthers purplish blue, ovary conic, 

 style slender. Fruit ovoid, oblong, cylindric, bluntly 

 pointed, orange scarlet, glistening, smooth, \ in. to f in. 

 long. Seeds flat, oval, or reniform, nearly smooth, 

 bright yellow, -J in. across. 



This plant is extensively cultivated in the East 

 Indies, Zanzibar, Japan, and elsewhere, and according to 

 Koxburgh, Sir John Kirk, and most other writers, is the 

 source of most of the cayenne pepper of commerce. It 

 forms an important article of diet among the Malays 

 and Indians, who seem to require it to eat with the 

 dried fish and rice which forms their everyday food, as 

 they carry it about with them wherever they travel. 

 It constantly occurs in a half-wild state about villages, 

 and especially in limestone rock districts. The seeds 

 are dispersed by birds, and plants in such localities are 

 often to be seen in great abundance on the rocks at the 

 base of the hills and on the precipitous 1 rock faces. The 

 form that occurs in this practically wild state is very 

 small fruited, the fruits being only \ in. long. 



A fairly good figure of the plant is given by Trimen 

 in the Medical Botany, iii. p. 189, but the fruits are 

 larger than in the wild form. Duthie, in Field and 

 Garden Crops, vol. iii., figures a very different looking 

 plant, with much larger pods. He suggests, however, 

 that this may be a hybrid between C. minimum and C. 

 frutescens, which appears likely. The most distinctive 

 points in C. minimum are the small size of the fruit, 

 which is erect and not pendulous as in most of the 

 other forms, and the correspondingly smaller flower with 

 narrower and more acute lobes, and the smaller leaves. 

 The fruit is also much more pungent than that of the 



