VIII 
PEPPERS 
241 
first purplish or dark green, eventually attains a thick- 
ness of -J- 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 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. 
In wild forms Barber^ states that the plant is 
unisexual, having only male flowers or female flowers 
^ “Varieties of Cultivated Pepper,” Report Madras Dept. Agriculture, vol. iii. 
56, p. 125. 
R 
