YOu can buy Long pepper plants from All Rare Herbs, Mapleton Queensland. It's a Piper like black pepper but very different to look at. It's a very tropical plant and needs a glasshouse in cold climates.

I use the pods in cooking all the time, they have a wonderful musky exotic spicy aroma and flavour.

They are available from Herbie's Spices, mail order. Cosmicgardener - you can buy them in Hobart. I saw them for sale at the Spice shop there, called 'Spice World'.

Thanks Michael and Jamus. I buy all my spices at Spice World in Hobart and they will post them up to me, I stock up after Christmas so I'll be sure to get some then. I have a hothouse but I suspect it would need a lot of space to get any quantity growing so I won;t bother. Thanks again.

Cosmic

Pipers are notoriously hard to get to fruit in a hothouse situation. I have Piper nigrum, Piper longum and Piper sarmentosum. I've had flowers on the sarmentosum, but they didn't develop into fruit, and what's more, that's the only one of the three which the fruit isn't used, only the leaves! Murphies law is in action here I think.
There is a good sized Piper nigrum in a glasshouse at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. It flowers but I've never seen fruit set. Maybe it's the of a polinator?

No wonder it's hard to find. In Ayruveda it is a specific ingredient in asthma medications and my friend in Melbourne who is asthmatic and recently saw an Ayurvedic practitioner is waiting on him getting supplies direct from India. I thought it was a bit of a con but seems they don;t trust what is sold locally - so I'll have to trust Spice Wrold who are very very good but I will discuss his source of supply. There is some component in it that doesn't appear is other pipers apparently. I certainly won;t be trying to grow it .Thanks for your help
L

Linda, I find that easy to believe that it would have a component not present in other peppers. It's got quite a unique fragrace. There is a similar species, Piper retrofractum you need to watch out for. It is inferior as a spice. I have some at home just for novelty value, but I don't use it in cooking. The long pepper I saw at Spice World was the real deal, but it'll be expensive...

Here is a link that might be useful: Gernot Katzer on long pepper

Update: my sdon in law went into Spice World but they had no Piper Longum by any other name npot do they seem to have heard of it. They checked the supply catalogue and it isn't available. So I'm not sure what it might have been that you bought there - I will try Herbies. Cheers Linda

I'm surprised by that! Sorry for the misleading info Linda, that's a great little spice shop, I felt sure I'd seen it there. Herbie's definitely have it, I buy it from there regularly. Also you can get it mail order from some international spicers. Check the link below, 500g for $25.00 canadian.

Here is a link that might be useful: Francesco Sirene

Not your problem - SW might have it under another name - although they apparently looked it up in their catalogue, it has so many different names it would be easy to miss. I will be following through and let you know because it, like turmeric, is such a valuable component in many Ayurvedic medicines. ( Like the webpage by the way!)
Linda

Thanks Linda, I'd love to hear how you go with long pepper. I love the aroma of this spice, I have bought several packs from Herbie. It's not cheap, but perhaps you don't need much for your application? The webpage is just a bit of fun... it's nowhere near finished, people keep commenting on it. I should remove the link so it can be 'unveiled' on completion!

Don't remove the link - it is always nice to visit growing websites - nearly as good as growing gardens.

It's a pepper that looks a bit like an inverted catkin. It was used extensively by the Romans and was more common than piper nigra (black peppercorns) in the middle ages. It came from Northern India and similar places and was traded along tghe spice routes. It is a tad hotter than "normal" pepper. It went almost completely out of use once the "new world" was discovered and used as Europe's farm house.
See, sometimes being an anorak pays off.