Mary Allen
Pepper is a plant. It usually means black pepper. There are other plants or spices that are sometimes called pepper. Black pepper is an important spice to make something taste hotter.
The pepper plant comes from Asia. It was also used there as a medicine in the past: Pepper is said to help against diarrhea and other problems with digestion, heart problems, and many other diseases. In fact, pepper would often be harmful to such diseases.
In Europe, pepper was popular as a spice, but cost a lot of money. At the end of the Middle Ages, it was difficult to get hold of him because it was no longer possible to travel from Arabia to India. The ships with pepper sacks then had to sail all the way around Africa. When Christopher Columbus traveled to America, he was also interested in pepper. Chili, the hot paprika, came later from America. She has partially replaced pepper as a spice.
Pepper plants climb up trees, up to ten meters. The peppercorns, from which the spice is made, grow in small spikes. Today, the pepper mostly comes from Vietnam, Indonesia, and other countries in Asia, but also from Brazil.