Plant · P-652

Cubeb

Piper cubeba

Cubeb is an evergreen vine that climbs to about 6 m and is grown for its unripe berries, picked and dried whole into cubeb pepper. The peppery, bitter fruit seasons pickles, bitters and digestive liqueurs, appears in the Moroccan spice blend ras el hanout, and its distilled oil flavours sauces and lozenges. Traditional users also take the dried fruit and oil for coughs, poor digestion and urinary infections. It grows wild and cultivated in the frost-free lowland tropics, usually trained up the shade trees of a coffee planting rather than staked in the open.