CHAPTER IX 
LONG PEPPER 
There are two distinct kinds of pepper known as long 
pepper, and as such sold in the native markets of the 
East. These are the dried fruit spikes of Piper longum, 
L., a native of India, and P. ojfficinarum, L., a native of 
Java. The former may be called Indian long pepper, 
the latter Javanese long pepper. Very little has ever 
been published or recorded as to the history or cultiva- 
tion of these plants ; although there has been an exten - 
sive trade in the spice for many centuries, and it is the 
Indian name for the long pepper from which the word 
pepper is derived, that is to say the Hindustani 
pipat.” 
Long pepper was known almost certainly to Theo- 
phrastus, in the fourth century B.c. It is mentioned with 
a rough woodcut by Clusius {Uistoria aromatum), but 
he does not seem to have been well acquainted with it. 
Piper longum, L., Indian Long Pepper 
This plant is a native of Bengal, Nepal, Assam, and 
Khasiya and southward to Travancore, and is cultivated 
chiefly in the northern parts of India. It has 
been occasionally met with in native gardens in 
Ceylon, but appears to be quite absent from the Malay 
peninsula and archipelago, where it is replaced by the 
Javanese long pepper. The climate indeed appears to be 
too damp for it. 
According to Roxburgh, it is not a climbing plant, 
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