My first Carolina Reaper (ever), but ...

[AJ Drew]

TrentL, the more I read here on this forum the more I count my blessings.  I have not had a negative experience with Pepper Joe, but I read other people have.  I did not think the Carolina Reaper was unstable, but I read people who swear it is.  Now for the punch line, I have ordered peppers from Ebay.  While I did find some rot now and then, they always seemed to be what was claimed.  But not long ago, I was in a thread here were someone ordered from a site rather than ebay and the peppers were horrible.
 
It might sound a bit off, but I kind of like having to decide which pods are food and which are seed stock for the next year.  Makes me feel like I am improving something.  A friend of mine likened how I feel to bee keeping.  She thinks of all her hives as a collective rather than individual hives.  Sometimes it is necessary to eliminate one of the collective for the better of the rest.  Difference is, I can eat my culls.

 

[TrentL]

Are you growing them in isolation with no other types of peppers around? If not, you'll get surprised sooner or later when that random bee sticks his nose in to two different flowers on two different plants.
 
Cross fertilization doesn't change the pod shape that year. But the seeds that grow inside will carry the genetic makeup of both parents. When you grow them out, it can get quite unpredictable. 

 

[teejay]

Here's what things ended up like, with the first plant of interest in my raised garden bed producing the left pod, and the others (with two having inverted tails ?!) from my plant in the ground.
 
Remember, both were from the same supplier.
 

 

[KrakenPeppers]

My current "reaper" plants are growing exactly the same pods as the three right ones.. And I posted some "please ID" in the other forum for a pod meant to be a reaper from the same stock that looked like the left one..

Lol similar story no?? I'd say there's some tainted if not crossed stock floating around that a lot of suppliers are getting there hands on..

It's hard to say if the reaper is just a true recessive plant and when it isn't self pollinating it's picking up dominative traits like smooth pods and small size , as the recesive pimply and large gets knocked out , but I see a common theme around all suppliers stocks..

Maybe self pollinating stocks hold onto there goodness in the next round of seeds , and cross pollinating even from there brothers and sisters activates some domanitive traits ( Smooth poded plants etc. that slip through )

I just ate one of my tiny reaper pod tonight again and wow it's smashed my mouth , but does it look like a true reaper . Hell no..

 

[AJ Drew]

TrentL - On the innies, I you are leading me to my original thought that the soil / moisture makes a difference.  My guess is that your raised bed has more mulch and water retaining material.  My homestead started as two inches of top soil and then clay.  After a decade of working organic material into it, I have some really good areas and some not so good areas.  Bet my good area is about as good as your raised bed and my not so good area is like where you planted in the ground.

The raised bed one doesnt have the same bumps, but it is plump and no sign of having an inverted end.

I grow seed stock with barrier isolation.  I grow food stock with distance and planning like: Pepper, Corn, Pepper, Corn.  that way my corn can help shade the field peppers. Also, if a goat gets loose they will ignore the peppers for the corn.

Kraken - On seed stock, guy China is selling the stuff by the ounce now.  People here in the US are buying bulk and then putting it into dime bags.  Sorry, Highschool flashback.  Fortunately for me, I frigging love to show off.  So this year, am planning on photographing EVERYTHING for the web site.  Well almost everything.  I thought to photograph the fields before and after I till but they look so damn ugly before tilling that I decided not to.  Weeds are my cover crops.

On your Reapers having inverted stingers: Are they from the same plant and the same area?  I am really thinking it is an environment thing.  Going to plant a small test area and water the hell out of it this year, then another that I only water when they are about to drop leaves from dehydration.

 

[moruga welder]

 
The top reaper from 2013 probably *was* just washed, but the second one wasn't.
 
But the red; that's just my Nokia phone. 
 
It's camera sensor is crazy sensitive to red. 
 
That 2013 plant was overwintered and I continued harvesting off of it the next year; look at the variety in pod shapes off of the one potted plant here;
 

 
 
And another pick from that same plant;
 

 
 
I also had some seeds from Ed not really run true at all in 2014. The "not" reapers were nowhere near as hot (but still quite brutal) and they looked a lot more like Nagas.
 

 
(I had to crop that from a larger "bounty" pic as I didn't take any comparing the reaper pod shapes; there's pods from 4 plants there. Two of them grew in classic reaper shape and two grew long, looking like nagas.)

my reapers did the same thing like the pods above      

 

[AJ Drew]

I understand Puckerbutt licenses people to grow its seed stock.  Maybe one of the growers didnt pay as much attention to detail as another.