Piper sylvaticum

A decorative, trailing to creeping pepper plant from Southeast Asia and India with beautifully white-patterned leaves. Rather slow-growing and quite robust.

This plant is sold (also by us) under the name Piper sylvaticum , but unfortunately there is a small problem: This plant is definitely not Piper sylvaticum .

The true *P. sylvaticum* is , frankly, rather boring. It has no white markings on its leaves and a different leaf shape as well. Unfortunately, the name has been so frequently misused by plant enthusiasts that the incorrectly named images have overshadowed the correct images from scientific sources. If you'd like to see for yourself that *P. sylvaticum* actually looks quite different: Here are some pictures of herbarium specimens of the species, and here (PDF download) is a recent scientific paper that describes the species precisely and also includes images.

Now the question remains, of course: What exactly is this plant?

Unfortunately, we don't know for sure. There are over 1000 described Piper species and several dozen known but undescribed ones. Two candidates for the correct name of this species are Piper sylvestre and Piper maculaphyllum . Unfortunately, there is very little information about these two, but at least they do have a white marking similar to what we commonly know as " Piper sylvaticum ".



Strong young plant in a 9 cm square pot. Approx. 20-30 cm long.



Please note: Piper species are very sensitive to temperature. The plants will only be shipped again in styrofoam boxes with heat packs once nighttime temperatures are consistently between 12 and 15 °C. This may not be until the end of February or even March. Until then, paid plants will remain in our greenhouse and are reserved for you. Orders containing Piper species will NOT be split into partial shipments. If you have any questions, please contact us by email at webshop@jungle-leaves.de.