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 
Roxburgl liana, 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 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 
