Whipped inside your pumpkin-spiced latte (or cereal or virtually anything), are a combination of spices, none of which are pumpkin, but which include the spice with the confounding name: Allspice.
Allspice is not a blend of spices, as the name suggests, but a fruit, picked off a small tree before ripening, then dried or sold as whole berries to be ground up.
Europeans first encountered allspice thanks to Christopher Columbus, who took some of the dried berries back to Spain and introduced them as peppers. The ship's doctor on the second of Columbus' voyages named the fruit, but it was considered a pepper for hundreds of years.
The peoples of the Caribbean, especially Jamaica, already knew allspice though, and then, as now, they use it in many dishes. The Mayans used it for embalming. The Arawak Indians of the Caribbean called it boucan and used it on a frame to cure meats.
European sailors took the idea and used the boucan method to preserve meats on board ships. So common was the practice that Caribbean pirates were called boucaniers, a short linguistic trip to the modern word, buccaneers.
The Europeans tried to grow the tree, but were unable to germinate seeds. For a hundred years, Jamaica was considered the only place in the world that allspice would grow. Eventually, botanists found that the seeds had to pass through the gut of birds in order to germinate.
Every cook probably has a little jar of the spice, which smells like a combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, and pepper. But the ground spice should not be kept for more than six months. The oils in allspice dissipate and the spice loses its flavor after that time.
