IX 
LONG PEPPER 
321 
from which spring the large and delicate flowers. In 
these the corolla has one erect lanceolate lobe, and two 
narrow linear ones, white or pale violet, and a large, 
spreading, fan-shaped lip, white tinted with rose, with 
a red and yellow blotch at the base. The fruit is pear- 
shaped, 3 or 4 in. long, red or orange, and containing 
a large number of very small seeds. The seeds are 
in. through, hard, roundish, oval, bluntly angular, 
golden brown in colour, aromatic and pungent. 
A good figure of this handsome plant is given in 
Roscoe’s Scitamineae PI. and also in Trimen’s Medical 
Botany and in Johnson’s Liberia. 
The plant appears to vary considerably and two 
varieties are described, one the var. minor with smaller, 
pale lavender flowers and narrower leaves [Botanical 
Magazine, T. 5987), and the var. violascens, red, with 
bright violet flowers. 
The plant is widely distributed in Sierra Leone and 
Lower Guinea, as far as Angola. I cannot find that 
it has ever been cultivated in any quantity anywhere 
even in West Africa. The plant was cultivated in 
Demerara some years ago and throve there, producing 
fruit 5 in. long, but I find no record of the plant being 
there now, in referring to the Garden reports of British 
Guiana, Surinam, etc. 
History. — This spice was, it appears, earliest known 
under the name Melegetae, a word derived from Melle 
(Meli or Mely), a name for an empire in the upper 
Niger country, formerly inhabited by the Mandingos. 
The word is also commonly spelt Melegueta, Mellegette, 
Mallaguetta, Manigeta, and Maniguetta, and the country 
whence it was obtained was called by the Portuguese 
Terra de Malaguet, or Costa di Maniguetta, and also 
was known as the Grain Coast, or Pepper Coast, from 
this spice. 
It does not appear that the spice was known 
to the ancients, and the earliest record of it is in an 
account of a festival held at Treviso in 1214, in which 
an imitation fortress, held by twelve ladies and their 
Y 
