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In the last few years, local nurseries (e.g., Plant Depot and Green Thumb in Orange County) have been stocking a nicer variety of peppers in 4" pots, and up until now they have all grown true for me. This season though, I bought a plant labeled "datil"--C. chinense, that is pretty obviously a C...

Do you have chickens running loose in the yard? Looks just like my plants when the chooks decide that they're tasty.

don't go by Zimmern. He's a bit of a wuss and can't stomach a lot of delicious stuff--like funazushi and balut. Durian's smell is part of the appeal, but if you want a very accessible introduction, go with frozen, seedless durian (some Asian stores have it), and blend it with milk (and fatalii...

Fatalii-durian milkshake; candied nagas; habanero simple syrup for lemonade. All three of these are bomb!

for me the best tomato hands down is costoluto--either costoluto genovese or costoluto fiorentino. They are heavily ribbed and subject to BER, but the flavor is incredible.

I say go for it, but be appropriately cautious. Ricinus, the first-place plant for most toxic, is growing as a weed everywhere there is abundant water, and nobody seems to be dying from it. Botanical curiosity is something to be encouraged.   I just found the world's coolest blog on botany. Here...

Well, yes and no. Polyploids tend to have two characteristics that make them stand out from the crowd. One is exaggerated size of various parts of their anatomy (I mean floral and fruit structures, you perverts). The other is immediate reproductive isolation from the parental stock. I would say...

just thinking out loud here. If natural tetraploid Capsicums are out there, wouldn't there also have to be some sterile (possibly seedless) triploids as the progeny of backcrosses with diploid stock? I haven't heard of anyone talking about their seedless peppers.

I decided to evaluate a few kinds of plants for potential use in an experiment to run with my bio classes--the objective is to have students make predictions based on a model that beneficial microbes have a positive effect on plant growth, and then to set up an appropriate experiment and...

Hi Nigel, Did you find that in a shop in Vista? I'd like to go to check if they have any more.

so lately I've been making rocotos rellenos with chorizo, ground beef, onions, potato, fatalii and scorpion powders as well as other spices, garlic, cream cheese, and shredded cheese for my 19-year old son and me, and the last couple of times he's polished off the whole thing (a pyrex pie dish...

Intriguing. I have tasted a couple of hot chile-flavored beers, but seeing pictures of the Randall gave me some mixed feelings. I have been kind of dismissive of flavor-infused beers as froux-froux, but does a heavy dose of capsaicinoids make it less poofter fare? Could I enjoy this while still...

Vista is Brew City, USA. I've got a faculty colleague who owns one and a student who pours at another. [And I fill my growler at a third.] I hadn't heard of Belching Beaver, though. Is the premiere tomorrow going to be at the San Diego tasting room? 

Hi, Nigel. The abstract you posted gave a figure of 50,000 years, didn't it? that's the number I'm calling into question. We (at least our species of ape) has been living where chiles are for about 9500 years, presuming that the precolumbian distribution of chiles was restricted to the New...

true enough, but 1) selective breeding of plants by humans can't be that ancient, and 2) in the case of Capsicum, the spiciness was really the reason for the plant's usefulness to humans, wasn't it? who would want to eat a half-rotten leg of rat smothered in bell peppers?   I'm curious about...

nice work, pepperhead! In the last part, it basically says that a disabling mutation of Pun1 (required for capsaicinoid synthesis) has given rise to the recessive gene pun1, which is the heatless version.   What I find odd is their suggestion that humans have been selectively breeding peppers...

well you ought to eat them back to back in reverse order, shouldn't you? ;-)   amazing tolerance, Nigel. Even with the surprise ending.

I grew a peach-colored cheiro last year, and it had pods very similar in shape to this. The flavor was that of an orange hab only moreso--basically everything that I dislike about orange habs was twice as strong in the peach cheiro. [In other words, it's not something I saved seeds from.] I'll...

to me that doesn't look like a scorpion tail, which seems to result from a restriction/non-expansion of the lower half of the developing pod. this looks more like the ovarium growing into the style remnant--a different mechanism. but an interesting pepper nonetheless

Great review and discussion. And yeah, Nigel--you are butchering the Portuguese in the grandest style ( :party: !).