Pod Pepper, Red Pepper, Guinea Pepper, Chillies, Capsicum; F. Piment ou Corail des Jardins, Poivre d’Inde ou de Guinée; G. Spanischer Pfeffer.
Botanical Origin—The plants, the fruits of which are known as Pod Pepper, have for a long period been cultivated in tropical countries, and are now found in such numerous varieties that an exact determination of the original species is a point of great difficulty. Of several species having pungent fruits, the two following are those which supply the spice found in British commerce:—
1. Capsicum fastigiatum Blume,[1659] a small ramous shrub, with 4-sided, fastigiate, diverging branches; fruit-bearing peduncles sub-geminate, slender, erect; fruit very small, subcylindrical, oblong, straight, with calyx obconical and truncate. It occurs apparently wild in Southern India, and is extensively cultivated in Tropical Africa and America.
Roxburgh, who describes this plant under the name C. minimum, terms it East Indian Bird Chilly or Cayenne Pepper Capsicum. Wight says that it is consumed by the natives of India, but that it is not the sort preferred. It is this species that the authors of the British Pharmacopœia have cited as the source of the Fructus Capsici to be used in medicine, and it certainly furnishes the greater part of the Pod Pepper now found in the London market.
2. C. annuum L., an herbaceous (sometimes shrubby?) plant, with fruit extremely variable in size, form, and colour, in some varieties erect, in others pendulous. According to Naudin, in whose opinion we concur, C. longum DC.[1660] and C. grossum Willd. are not specifically distinct from this plant. It furnishes the larger kinds of Pod Pepper and, as we believe, much of the Cayenne Pepper which is imported in the state of powder.
History—All species of Capsicum appear to be of American origin; no ancient Sanskrit or Chinese name for the genus is known, and the Latin and Greek names that have been referred to it are extremely doubtful.[1661]
The earliest reference to the fruit as a condiment that we have met with, occurs in a letter written in 1494 to the Chapter of Seville by Chanca, physician to the fleet of Columbus in his second voyage to the West Indies. The writer in noticing the productions of Hispaniola, remarks that the natives live on a root called Age, which they season with a spice they term Agi, also eaten with fish and meat.[1662] The first of these words signifies yam, the second is the designation of Red Pepper, and still the common name for it in Spanish. Capsicum and its uses are more particularly described by Fernandez, who reached Tropical America from Spain in a.d. 1514.[1663]
In the Historia Stirpium of Leonhard Fuchs, published at Basle in 1542, fol. 733, may be found the first and excellent figures of Capsicum longum DC. under the name of Siliquastrum or Calicut Pepper; the author states that the plant has been introduced into Germany from India a few years previously. From this might be inferred an Indian origin; but on the other hand, Clusius asserts that the plant was brought from Pernambuco by the Portuguese, whose commercial intercourse with India would easily explain it being carried thither at an early period. He further states, that the American capsicum had been generally introduced into the gardens at Castille, and that it was used all the year round, green or dried, as a condiment and as pepper. He also saw it cultivated in abundance at Brünn in Moravia in 1585.[1664]
Capsicum longum DC. was grown in England by Gerarde (1597 et antea), who speaks of the pods as well known, and sold “in the shops at Billingsgate by the name of Ginnie Pepper.”
Description—As already indicated, the Pod Pepper of commerce is of two kinds, namely:—