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Annuum vs. Chinense

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DocNrock

I am growing Trinidad PI281317 (C. chinense) from seed that I purchased from Pepperlover.com. I sowed seeds in both soil and Rapid Rooters. After culling, I have two plants, one from each medium. The plant growing from the Rapid Rooter looks like a chinense to me, but the one from soil looks to me like an annuum. 64 different varieties were sowed at the same time, so I am wondering if I might have accidentally sowed one of my annuums in the soil here instead of the PI281317. I am not asking anyone to identify the variety, just if one plant is an annuum and the other a chinense. Thanks.

Soil:

piannuum.jpg


Rapid Rooter:

pichinense.jpg
 
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Annuums tend to have longer narrower leaves than chinenses, and chinenses tend to have more heart-shaped leaves. Also, a lot of annuums have a basic Y-shape to their main stem and initial branches. From the angle of the upper pic, it's kind of hard to discern, but the two characteristics of annuums that I stated seem to be the case with the plant in the upper photo. Can you give us more of a top-down shot? The plant in the lower photo does seem like it has the broader, more heart-shaped leaves of a chinense.

Note that when I say "more heart-shaped" I mean relative to an annuum - not necessarily exactly heart-shaped, just closer to a heart-shape than the leaves of an annuum.
 
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Unfortunately, while there are some good rules of thumb, they're not 100% consistent. I am overwintering an ancho mulato, which is an annuum, and it is also budding. Yep - it's got two buds each at more than one growth node. Another anomalie with the general ID is that while it does have the predominant 'Y' shape to the main stem and initial branches, it also has a 3rd branch coming out at the 'Y' split. The third branch is not new, but it does have a slightly different appearance from the two main branches - it is less woody-looking than they are - so I still wouldn't consider it to be a "main" branch. So variations, mutations and anomalies can occur, which makes ID-ing more difficult. You may just need to play the waiting game - you'll have a better idea once pods start to appear.
 
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That is not your run of the mill c.chinense ie. orange habanero,carribean red. You will see different flowering,calyx,leaf shape on some chinense plants. I notice trinidadian varieties have a green tint to their flowers. The picture below is a rare c. chinense,and it had the growth pattern of a wild variety,leaf color of an ornamental,and smaller flowers than a tepin. It did end up having a mild chinense taste.


Edit for flower pic

2012-04-25_18-43-01_940-1.jpg
 
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