Black pepper

Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. The fruit, known as a peppercorn when dried, is a small drupe approximately 5mm in diameter, dark red when fully mature, containing a single seed. Peppercorns, and the powdered pepper derived from grinding them, may be described as black pepper, white pepper, green pepper, and very often only pepper. The terms pink peppercorns, red pepper (as in bell or chile), and green pepper (as in bell or chile) are also used to describe the fruits of other, unrelated plants. Sichuan peppercorn is another "pepper" that is botanically unrelated to black pepper. However, green peppercorns are also simply the immature black peppercorns.