—George Gee.
CUBEBS.
FROM KŒHLER’S MEDICINAL-PFLANZEN.
Description of Plate—A, twig with staminate flowers; B, fruit-bearing twig; 1, upper portion of staminate inflorescence; 2, staminate flower; 3, fruit; 4, 5, 6, 7, ovary; 8, 9, seed.
CUBEBS.
(Piper cubeba L.)
Aromatics, as cubebs, cinnamons and nutmegs, are usually put into crude poor wines to give them more oily spirits.—Floyer, “The Humors.”
The cubeb-yielding plant is not unlike the pepper plant and belongs to the same family (Piperaceae). The two resemble each other in general habits in the form of inflorescence and in the fruiting.
Cubebs were known to Arabian physicians as early as the ninth century, who employed them as a diuretic in kidney troubles. It was also known at that time that Java was the home of the plant. At one time it was believed that the Carpesium of ancient writers was cubebs, but this is now generally disbelieved. Edrisi states that cubeb found its way to Aden about 1153. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was employed medicinally in Spain. Originally it was doubtless employed as a spice, similar to pepper. Mariano Sanudo (1306) classed it among the rare and costly spices. Hildegard referred to the soothing properties of cubeb. In the thirteenth century cubeb is mentioned among the import articles of London. About the same time it found its way into other European countries, notably Germany. At the beginning of the nineteenth century cubeb disappeared almost entirely from medical practice. About 1820 English physicians of Java again began to employ it quite extensively.
As in the case of black pepper, the fruit is collected before maturity and dried. The fruit is about the size of the pepper, but has a stalk-like prolongation which distinguishes it. The pericarp becomes much shriveled and wrinkled on drying.
Cubebs are cultivated in special plantations or with coffee for which they provide shade by spreading from the trees which serve as their support. Their cultivation is said to be easy.