Pepper-elder

Piper amalago, known by the common names higuillo, cordoncillo, jaboncillo and Jamaican pepper, is a slender evergreen shrub or small tree in the family Piperaceae native to a wide range of habitats throughout the Neotropics from southern Florida and Mexico through Central America and the Caribbean to northern South America. Plants typically grow 1 to 4 metres tall, occasionally to 6 metres, with smooth pale brown bark and characteristic swollen nodes from which arise alternate, simple, ovate to elliptic-oblong leaves 6 to 15 centimetres long and 3 to 7 centimetres wide. The blades are dark glossy green above and paler beneath, with three to five prominent palmate-pinnate veins arising from near the base and a strong aromatic, peppery scent when crushed. Tiny apetalous flowers are densely packed on slender, erect to slightly curved spikes 4 to 10 centimetres long that are borne opposite the leaves on short peduncles, each flower subtended by a small peltate bract. The fruit is a small green to red-black globose to ovoid drupe about 2 millimetres in diameter, crowded along the fleshy rachis of the infructescence.