CHAP. XI 
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, ^ 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 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. 
fruteseens, 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 
