Black Pepper Plants

Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. The fruit, known as a peppercorn when dried, is a small drupe approximately 5 millimetres (0.20 in) in diameter, dark red when fully mature, containing a single seed. Peppercorns, and the powdered pepper derived from grinding them, may be described simply as pepper, or more precisely as black pepper, white pepper, or green pepper. The terms pink peppercorns, red pepper (as in bell or chile), and green pepper (as in bell or chile) are also used to describe the fruits of other, unrelated plants. Sichuan peppercorn is another "pepper" that is botanically unrelated to black pepper. However, green peppercorns are also simply the immature black peppercorns.Black pepper is native to South India and is extensively cultivated there and elsewhere in tropical regions. The spiciness of black pepper is due to the chemical piperine.The word "pepper" is ultimately derived from the Sanskrit pippali, the word for long pepper.