SC - Re: Long Pepper (again!)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

ALERT! ALERT! DANGER, WILL SCATLOCH!

I've just made a rather silly error, and thought I'd point it out before
anyone attempts to act upon this whole issue...

The most competent herbal encyclopedia I know shows quite clear
illustrations of both piper negrum and piper longum. The Negrum variety,
or black pepper, also grows in a long, fairly tight cluster, which looks
rather like an elongated blackberry. I suspect the individual berries
are separated to facilitate even fermentation (whence comes the
blackness) and drying.

Piper longum is apparently much smaller than black pepper (1 inch or so
vs. 3 or 4 inches long) and is more tightly packed in the cluster. So,
the cross-hatching effect drawn by some artists may have some basis in
reality; it looks almost like the bud from which a pine-cone grows.

I therefore suspect it's possible Ysabeau has seen green peppercorns.

Also, in case it helps, I have here some alternate names for the beastie
in question:

Pharmaceutical name:	Fructus Piperis Longi
Botanical name:		Piper Longum
Mandarin:			Bì Bá  (That's Bi Ba, with both vowels accented facing
each 		
						other, like angry cartoon eyebrows, for those of you with
						straight ASCII text readers)
Japanese:				Hihatsu
Korean:				P'ilhal
English: 				Long Pepper Fruit

I also have a pair of Chinese ideograms, which might be useful for the
non-Mandarin-speaking Chinese, but I can't duplicate them here on short
notice.

I also have acquired a listing of every herb store in the New York City
area (several hundred) , and so the hunt begins...See what you people
started??? :   )

Sorry about the error. Didn't mean to mislead anyone. It 's just that my
tiny brain is full, and for each new thing I learn, I tend to forget
something else.

Adamantius