Plant · P-486

Black Pepper Vine

Piper nigrum

Black Pepper Vine is a woody evergreen climber that needs a living support tree - ideally at least 4 meters tall - to grow into a genuine two-story planting rather than a trellis crop. It comes from the monsoon forests of southern India and produces the peppercorn: dried and ground whole for black pepper, stripped of its skin for white pepper, or pickled green as a relish. It wants heavy year-round rainfall and frost-free warmth, and takes three to four years to first bear, seven years to reach full production, and up to six tonnes of green peppercorns per hectare once it does.