Description

Tailed pepper is a plant in genus piper, cultivated for its fruit and essential oil. It is mostly grown in Java and Sumatra, hence sometimes called Java pepper. The fruits are gathered before they are ripe, and carefully dried. Commercial cubeb consists of the dried berries, similar in appearance to black pepper, but with stalks attached – the "tails" in "tailed pepper". The dried pericarp is wrinkled, and its color ranges from grayish brown to black. The seed is hard, white and oily. The odor of cubeb is described as agreeable and aromatic and the taste as pungent, acrid, slightly bitter and persistent. It has been described as tasting like allspice, or like a cross between allspice and black pepper

Characteristics:

Tailed pepper-Piper cubeb is a perennial plant, climbing vine, the leaves are smooth, dark green, long and tapered apex, ovate to oblong, tapered apex, up to 6.5 inches long, branches round. The flowers are in narrow spikes at the branches apex. Fruit is a berry, little longer than black pepper and tailed. Quite glabrous, stem stout climbing and rooting, leaves very short petioled rather coriaceous oblong-ovate or lanceolate acuminate, 3-5 nerved at the very obliquely cordate auricled base penninerved above it. Fruiting spike stoutly peduncled, suberect conico-cylindric.

Medicinal Uses:

Dental diseases, loss of voice, fevers, and cough, halitosis, external application of the  paste of the cubeb can intensify sexual pleasure in male and female during coitus. Fruit tonic is used for languidness and after child birth, haemorrhoidal affections. Fruit and root is used in dyspepsia. The fruit is used for the treatment of cough and common cold and the stem bark for asthma, cough, cold, indigestion, loss of appetite and piles. The antitubercular properties of this plant has also been reported. Preliminary pharmaco-logical examination revealed a hypotensive and smooth muscle relaxant action.