Description
Pepper harvest in the Cardamom Hills near Thekkadi, a small town in the southwestern Indian state of Kerala. The slopes of these hills are sparsely covered with deciduous trees, whose trunks are enveloped by the dense foliage of the pepper bushes. Pepper is a climbing plant that—much like wild grapevines or ivy—grows upward on trees and rock faces using its tough, supple tendrils and adhesive aerial roots. To harvest the long clusters of pepper berries, the picker uses a sturdy bamboo pole—on which he has trimmed the side shoots to the width of a step—as a ladder. – 1990
