Black Pepper

Black pepper is the dried fruit of Piper nigrum, a perennial woody vine of the family Piperaceae native to South or South-east Asia; wild vines still grow in the Western Ghats of India. Climbing trees or poles to about four metres, it carries small flowers on hanging spikes that ripen into strings of small drupes. For black pepper the fruit is picked unripe, scalded briefly and dried until its skin shrinks into a wrinkled black coat; white pepper is the seed alone, stripped of the ripe fruit's flesh. Indian cooks have used it since at least 2000 BCE, and peppercorns were packed into the nostrils of the mummified Ramesses II. Rome imported it in bulk: Kynes describes great storehouses, ornate pots of gold and silver, pepper as far off as Hadrian's Wall, and peppercorns given as presents at Saturnalia. In medieval Europe it stood for wealth and paid dowries and taxes, and the token peppercorn rent survives in law; it was also thought an aphrodisiac. In magic, Cunningham adds it to amulets against the evil eye, wears it to free the mind of envy, and mixes it with salt to scatter round a property against evil. Kynes keeps a few peppercorns with her ritual tools to cleanse them and release old energy, and diffuses the oil in spells for justice or to break out of a rut.