The genus Piper is well known for their medicinal and economic potentials and is distributed in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Majority of the taxa under the genus Piper are morphologically confusing because of the wide range of variations within the vegetative characters. A total of 22 morphological characters, including both vegetative and reproductive characters were studied at a mature stage in 35 accessions of Piper taxa collected from North East India representing 12 species. The morphometric variables were analyzed using variance and Principal Component Analysis. It was carried out to identify the useful characters that can contribute to distinguish various species. The Unweighted Pair Group Method and Arithmetic Average clustering method for the vegetative traits and reproductive traits show two principal clusters. The present study revealed the importance of the morphological characters in delimitation of taxonomic grouping of the confusing species.
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