All the American species are of a nearly uniform dark brown or blackish colour when adult; but it is a curious circumstance that when young (and in this the Malay species conforms with the others) they are conspicuously marked with spots and longitudinal stripes of white or fawn colour on a darker ground.
Commercial cubebs consist of the dried berries, usually with their stalks attached; the pericarp is greyish-brown, or blackish and wrinkled; and the seed, when present, is hard, white and oily.
This species is larger than the two preceding; it is green, with minute blackish spots.
Deposits of limonite in cavities may have a rounded surface or even a stalactitic form, and may present a brilliant lustre, of blackish colour, forming what is called in Germany Glaskopf (glass head).
The term epithallus is sometimes applied to the superficial dense portion of the cortical layer and the term hypothallus to the layer, when specially modified, in immediate contact with the substratum; the hypothallus is usually dark or blackish.
