Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 January 1884 — How Pepper Grows. [ARTICLE]

How Pepper Grows.

While at Penang my gharrie driver took me to see a Chinese pepper plantation. Pepper is a very profitable crop. The vine begins to bear in three or four years after the cuttings have been planted and yields two crops annually for about thirteen years. It is an East Indian plant, rather pretty, but of rambling and untidy growth, a climber, with smooth, soft stems, ten or twelve feet long, and tough, broadly ovate leaves. It is supported much as hops are. When the berries on a spike begin to turn red they are gathered, as they lose pungency if they are allowed to ripen. They are placed on mats, and are either trodden with the feet or rubbed by the hand to separate them from the spike, after which they are cleansed by winnowing. Black pepper consists of such berries wrinkled and bla'ckened in the process of drying, and white pepper of similar berries freed from the skin and the fleshy part of the fruit by being soaked in water and then rubbed. The nutmeg tree is a beautiful tree, from forty to fifty feet high when full grown, with shining foliage, somewhat resembling that of the bay, and its fruit looks like a very large nectarine. One fully ripe was gathered for me. It had opened and revealed the nutmeg with its dark brown shell shining through its crimson retjculated envelop of mace, the whole lying in a bed of pure white, a beautiful object.