Long pepper is the dried, unripe fruiting spike of the climbing vine Piper longum, a close cousin of black pepper. Instead of loose round peppercorns it forms a small, hard, catkin-like cone — a single spike a few centimetres long, studded with dozens of fused, poppy-seed-sized fruits. It is hotter and more complex than black pepper, with a sweet, piney, cardamom-and-cinnamon warmth and a slow, lingering, faintly numbing heat. It was the pepper of choice in ancient Greece and Rome before the round peppercorn eclipsed it, and it survives today in Indian, Indonesian and North African cooking and in Ayurveda, where it is known as pippali.