• Please post pictures and as much information as possible.

Odd Vietnamese Pepper

This pepper was grown from a dried chili my wife brought from Vietnam. She brought a few for spicing up dishes, but we decided to try sprouting some seeds. It is a common chili in Southern Vietnam up through the Highlands (Da Lat) and possibly father North. In SouthVietnam, it is famous for being specifically eaten with Phở and is notably distinct from the Thai chili which is used in many other dishes.

We have tried to identify this pepper and the closest image we found online is the Ớt sừng Ba Tri; this roughly translates to Large 'Ba Tri' Chili. That being said, considering there are only a handful of images online, I feel that this is likely a local name for a variant that has another name which is more common.

Of note:
Yellow green at their spiciest, they get less hot as they begin to turn red. They do not turn orange like the Ho Chi Minh chili, essentially going straight to red.

Length during optimal summer months is 3-5” long. They get shorter as the days grow shorter. This seems larger than the Vietnamese Tear Jerker.

The peppers seem to randomly either start pointing up or pointing down on the same plant. This year, most are pointing down, last year more pointed up when they started. Irrespective of how they start growing, as they get bigger, they all point down.

The stems of the chili peppers are covered in a thin bark-like texture which is brown-purple in color. This transitions to smoother upper branches which are more green or purple. The leaf and chili stems are all bright green.

Since we are far from their optional growing area, they vary from hotter than a Thai chili to moderate heat. The wife says they also tend to get a tad fatter in Vietnam, than those in the images.

I have attached a number of pictures from last year and this year. Please let me know if closer pictures can help anything.
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Whenever I try to help ID someones pepper I use googles "image" setting, available in the top right corner of the home page, plugging in a general description like.>Vietnam chile pepper. Then look through the resulting pix for a match.
 
Hope this helps! NECM....
 
Disclaimer! I use Norton's and one of the links I clicked on triggered a popup advising they had blocked a known issue of attack.
 
The_NorthEast_ChileMan said:
Whenever I try to help ID someones pepper I use googles "image" setting, available in the top right corner of the home page, plugging in a general description like.>Vietnam chile pepper. Then look through the resulting pix for a match.
 
Hope this helps! NECM....
 
Disclaimer! I use Norton's and one of the links I clicked on triggered a popup advising they had blocked a known issue of attack.
 
I appreciate your help, this was one of my first searches. Unfortunately, Viet cuisine use a number of different kinds of chili peppers in different circumstances. She could name off her head at least 5-8 different chili peppers which they use regularly, some very spicy some notably sweet. For example, from my google search, the following image shows the peppers: the yellow-green ones on the right are the Ớt sừng Ba Tri according to my wife. She said they can vary from more skinny like ours to this slightly fatter type based on the season, weather, etc. The image is just a stock image of a market stall in Huế, the peppers are not identified. 
basket-with-pepper-beans-and-other-spices-inside-hue-street-market-vietnam-T793E9.jpg
 
Pedro, I read your post with interest because Im growing an unknown Vietnamese pepper. I get my hair cut at a place run by a Vietnamese couple, and the wifes mother brought dried peppers from Vietnam. They gave me some of the mix and I germinated the seeds that were in with the dried pepper. They were slow to germinate so maybe the stuff was old, and the plants havent been vigorous growers. Also, I got off to a late start, so my plants are only now beginning to flower. Of course, Ive got no idea what the pepper is. Anyhow, its always fun to grow a new pepper, especially when the seeds have come from another country. When I get some ripe pods Ill compare them to the pics youve posted. Cheers, Tom
 
kentishman said:
Pedro, I read your post with interest because Im growing an unknown Vietnamese pepper. I get my hair cut at a place run by a Vietnamese couple, and the wifes mother brought dried peppers from Vietnam. They gave me some of the mix and I germinated the seeds that were in with the dried pepper. They were slow to germinate so maybe the stuff was old, and the plants havent been vigorous growers. Also, I got off to a late start, so my plants are only now beginning to flower. Of course, Ive got no idea what the pepper is. Anyhow, its always fun to grow a new pepper, especially when the seeds have come from another country. When I get some ripe pods Ill compare them to the pics youve posted. Cheers, Tom
How did it turn out?

I have seen some recent references in English to Batri chili/Ba tri chili, so I guess that is the English name. These peppers clearly love sun/heat (unsurprising based on the origins) and the peppers are very fragrant and flavorful. The spice level has varies a good amount even on the same plant same year. It varies between a spicy jalapeno and a so hot that a sliver of the pepper is 10x hotter than that. 

Also if anyone wants some seeds from a spicy one (especially anyone who chimed in on here or is quite active on the forum) I can mail some to you. Mods please let me know if this isn't the right location.

 
 
The Hot Pepper said:
Ớt Hiem? (Mean Pepper)
Thanks but nope. Ớt Hiem is more or less a Vietnamese variant of a Thai chili.

The fruit on Ớt  Hiem are small (<2" in length), distinctly green/red, point upwards like a birdseye, and have that distinct Thai chili taste. Ớt Ba Tri on the other hand are medium sized at around 3-5" in length, green/yellow in color slowly and gradually aging into reddish, the fruit tend to point downwards when growing, and are notably more fragrant and more distinctively flavorful. The leaves on the Ớt Ba Tri are notably larger than I have ever seen on a Thai chili/Ớt Hiem. Plus my Vietnamese wife said definitively that these are not Ớt Hiem :lol:, she said they are used in different dishes. 
 
I see them always just labeled red chilis next to the thais. Some people call them hanoi market peppers. Not sure what people in Hanoi would call them. Look at google images of hanoi market peppers, you will see them in most the images.
 
Bofu said:
I see them always just labeled red chilis next to the thais. Some people call them hanoi market peppers. Not sure what people in Hanoi would call them. Look at google images of hanoi market peppers, you will see them in most the images.
Wife says those are closer in size but by local standards, very different in flavor. 
 
JustMike said:
I'd love to try my hand at them. If you ever want to swap some seeds let me know!
Apologies for the delays, I work in biotech and recent times have been VERY busy. 
 
Certainly! We harvested some fruit for seeding and sharing. Just PM me your address and I will try to ship out next week. 
 
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