The Piper longum L. is an annual herbaceous liana of the Piper genus(Piper) in the Piperaceae family. It is climbing vine, flowers in Spring, fruiting from July to October, the fruit, the ear of the Piper, looks much like mulberry fruit, picked when its color turns from green to dark, when it is ripe or nearly-ripe.The panicles are cylindrical, slightly curved, 15 to 45 mm long and 5 to 8 mm in diameter. The total stalk has fallen off. The surface is dark brown, gathered by many small achenes, arranged closely and neatly, forming a staggered small process. Achenes slightly globose, bracteoles, ca. 1 mm in diam. Hard, cross section reddish, endosperm white; It has a characteristic aroma, spicy taste, similar to pepper.
Like Piper longum L., Piper sarmentosum Roxb is also a member of the Piperaceae family, it leaf touches soft, but not so smooth and even a little tough, feels like a toad skin, so in part of south China, Piper Sarmentosum is called Toad Skin plant, the leaf is used as vegetable, to wrap rice and pork steak for cooking to the local people, also a spice for cooking fish, taro, beef, pork, etc, used like perilla. As a traditional herb medicine, has been widely used as an alternative drug in clinic, reports on its safety are lacking. According to ancient books, the clinical dosage of P. sarmentosum for adult is recommented to be 9–15 g daily, the root dosage is recommended to be 10–15 g, and the internal dose of fruit is 1.5–3 g daily (Chinese Materia Medica, 1999). Most noticeably, it was also recorded that P. sarmentosum consumption was forbidden for pregnant women.
Piper Sarmentosum fruit shapes oval, 8 to 20 mm long, 4 to 8mm in diameter, a little smaller than Piper longum fruit, base nearly no fruit stalk, surface black brown or yellow brown, there are also most oval-shaped or spherical small berry protrusions, but not arranged in order, the surface also without bracting; The texture is hard and brittle, easy to break, and spherical red-brown seeds can be seen in the section; There is no special aroma of Piper longum, fragrance and spicy taste is slightly, no numb tongue feeling.
Modern pharmacological studies have confirmed that the essential oil extracted from Piper longum and Piper sarmentosum has inhibitory effect on a variety of pathogenic bacteria such as Staphylococcus albicans, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus cereus, Escherichia coli and so on.
The P. longum and P. Sarmentosum are rich in bilogical alkaloidsl, generally are piperamides, Among which, piperine, piperlongumine and piperlonguminine plays an effective role in pharmaceutical applications. India developped and validated a simple reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography method to analyze chemo-diversity of these three piperamides in Piper nigrum L., Piper longum L., Piper sarmentosum Roxb. The separation was achieved on a RP-C18 column with water (0.1% Acetic acid) and methanol as mobile phase with detection wavelength of 338 nm. The compounds were identified using authentic standards. The developed method was validated as per ICH guidelines for linearity, accuracy, precision, limit of detection and limit of quantification.
Researches shows piperlongumine was detected in both Piper sarmentosum and Piper longum, respectively 1.7 mg g−1 concentration in P.sarmentsoum and 1.2 mg g−1 in P.longum. Piperlonguminine is higher in Piper chaba and Piper nigrum, 2.1 mg g−1 in each species. And piperine is higher in Piper chaba and Piper nigrum too.