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 same fruit is also used to produce white pepper and green pepper.[1] Black pepper is native to South India and is extensively cultivated there and elsewhere in tropical regions. The fruit is a small drupe five millimetres in diameter, dark red when fully mature, containing a single seed.
Dried and ground pepper is one of the most common spices in European cuisine and its descendants, having been known and prized since antiquity for both its flavour and its use as a medicine. The spiciness of black pepper is due to the chemical piperine. Ground black peppercorn, usually referred to simply as "pepper", may be found on nearly every dinner table in some parts of the world, often alongside table salt.
The word pepper is derived from the Sanskrit pippali [2], via the Latin piper and Old English pipor. The Latin word is also the source of German pfeffer, French poivre, Dutch peper, and other similar forms. In the 16th century, pepper started referring to New World chile peppers as well. Pepper was used in a figurative sense meaning "spirit" or "energy" at least as far back as the 1840s; in the early 20th century, this was shortened to pep.[3]
[1] Green capsicum or bell pepper may also be called "green pepper"; it is an unrelated plant.
[2] Pippali is Sanskrit for long pepper, in fact. Black pepper is marica. Greek and Latin borrowed pippali to refer to either.
[3] Douglas Harper's Online Etymology Dictionary entries for pepper and pep. Retrieved 13 November 2005.
from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pepperRemember - Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is unrelated to
Capsicum species which contain varying amounts of
capsaicin (methyl vanillyl nonenamide).
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