Plant · P-1147

Chile Pequin

Capsicum annuum

Chile Pequin is the wild ancestor of the cultivated pepper, bearing pea- to fingernail-sized fruit that ripens from green through orange to fiery red. The berries are used as a seasoning rather than a vegetable - fresh, dried and ground into a paprika-like powder, or infused for a fiercely hot flavouring. Birds eat the ripe fruit whole and pass the seed unharmed, which is how it earned its other common names, bird pepper and turkey pepper, and how it spreads itself into fence lines and under perches with no help from anyone. It survives as a short-lived perennial only where winters stay frost-free; anywhere colder it is killed to the ground each year and simply grows back from its own dropped seed. One planting rule worth knowing: keep it away from apricot trees, since a fungus that troubles the pepper can seriously damage the apricot.