Interesting volunteer pepper

[zxcvbob]

I talked to my brother in Houston last night, and he mentioned an interesting pepper he has this year. He grew Trinidad Spice peppers last year (habanero-type chinense pepper with no heat at all), and a few jalapenos. Apparently they crossed, because he kept some volunteer plants and one of them looks like a habanero plant, and the peppers are dark green, thick-walled and look like a misshapened jalapeno -- and they are extremely hot like a normal habanero or maybe even hotter. The heat hits you like a big hammer and then subsides quickly; not at all like a jalapeno. He says the flavor is jalapeno-like, but also has some habanero fruitiness to it. The peppers have very few seeds. He's gonna take some cuttings to try to keep it alive over the winter just in case it's a mule.

It sounds like a great pepper to try to inbreed for a few generations and select for a pure strain. But I'll bet it's sterile.

Best regards, Bob

[Penelope Periwinkle]

What are they like when he lets them get ripe? There are at least a couple of Trinidad spice peppers, did the original ripen to red or yellow?

Please keep us informed, I'd love to hear what he ends up with. It does sound like an interesting pepper.

If it is producing seeds, why do you think the seeds will be sterile? Not all hybrids are sterile

Hmm, couldn't he test a few of the seeds now by putting them moist paper towel and seeing if they sprout?

Penelope

[zxcvbob]

Red.

This would be a cross-species hybrid. Capsicum annuum x chinense. The fact that it produces very few seeds is not a good sign.

Hopefully he will. But if the seeds grow, very few are likely to resemble the parent plant. I had some seeds saved from an extremely hot brown pepper called "Jamaican Hot Chocolate". Most of the seedlings were red-fruited. After several generations of saving seeds and getting red peppers, I had a brown one show up again. I kept it alive in a big pot for several years.

Bob