The ground this tree stands on was set aside in 1836, before Melbourne had a name worth arguing about.
Peruvian Pepper
Schinus molle
The pink peppercorns sold in an expensive pepper grinder are not pepper. We map 3 of them, in 3 cities.
They come from this tree, an Andean member of the cashew family with no botanical relation to black pepper, carried out of South America by Spanish colonial trade in the sixteenth century and planted everywhere the climate allowed. Its weeping grey-green foliage moves in any wind at all, and a crushed leaf smells sharply of pepper, the family trait that earned it the name. In Melbourne it became the tree of colonial Australia, planted by the thousand along stock routes and rail sidings because it shrugged off drought and neglect; the one in Richmond's Madden Grove stands on ground set aside as a survey paddock in 1836, one of the city's earliest public reservations. Barcelona and Setubal took the opposite path, planting it singly as an ornamental curiosity, the softest tree in each garden it stands in.
Melbourne
Barcelona
In fruit
The pink peppercorns in an expensive pepper grinder are not pepper, and this is the tree they come from.
Setubal
In fruit
The Peruvian pepper is the weeping cousin of the tree on the avenue nearby, and the two together make a small lesson in how the same idea arrived in Europe twice.
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