What Is Capsicum?

Short answer

• Capsicum is a genus of flowering plants in the nightshade family, Solanaceae, native to the Americas. Its edible fruits are the peppers sold in grocery stores and grown in gardens, from sweet bell peppers to fiery habaneros.
• The same word means different things in different places. In the United States, people usually say bell pepper or chili pepper and rarely use the word capsicum. In Australia, India, Malaysia, Singapore, and New Zealand, capsicum is the everyday word for the sweet, mild fruit, while hot types are called chilli.
• Botanists count the genus differently depending on the reference, with older lists giving 20 to 27 species and a 2022 monograph recognizing 43. Only five species are widely grown for food: Capsicum annuum, Capsicum baccatum, Capsicum chinense, Capsicum frutescens, and Capsicum pubescens.
• Heat comes from capsaicin and related compounds called capsaicinoids, which are concentrated in the pale inner ribs of the fruit. Bell peppers make no capsaicin at all, which is why they score zero on the Scoville scale.
• Every true capsicum fruit is edible, including the small ornamental peppers grown for their bright colors, though ornamental types are grown for looks and their flavor can be unpredictable.

What Capsicum Is

Capsicum is the botanical name for the group of plants that produce peppers. It is a genus, which is a rank in biological classification that groups closely related species together. The genus sits inside the nightshade family, Solanaceae, the same family that includes tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants. That family connection is easy to see in the garden, because capsicum plants share the same general shape as their relatives: soft stems, simple leaves, and small star-shaped flowers that give way to fleshy fruit.

The word capsicum can refer to the plant, the fruit, or the whole genus, and that flexibility is part of why people ask what it is. A gardener who says capsicum usually means the plant in the ground. A cook who says capsicum usually means the fruit on the cutting board. A botanist who says Capsicum, with a capital C and in italics, means the genus itself. All three uses are correct, and the context usually makes the meaning clear.

What most people meet first is the fruit. Botanically the fruit is a berry, a fleshy fruit with seeds inside, even though cooks and grocery stores treat it as a vegetable. It comes in a wide range of shapes, sizes, and colors. Some are blocky and thick-walled, like bell peppers. Some are long and thin, like cayenne. Some are small and round, like the wild peppers that still grow in South America. Colors run from green through yellow, orange, and red, with purple and near black types as well. A green pepper is usually just an unripe fruit of a variety that turns red, yellow, or orange as it matures, and the ripe fruit is typically sweeter than the green one.

The genus is native to the Americas. Wild capsicums still grow in South and Central America, and the first chili peppers evolved around Bolivia, according to researchers at New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute. From that region the plants spread, first by birds carrying the small wild fruits, and later by people who selected larger, milder, or hotter types and carried them across the Americas and then around the world.

One Word, Several Meanings

The most confusing thing about capsicum is that English speakers in different countries use the word to mean different things. In the United States the word is mostly a scientific or specialist term. Americans buy bell peppers and chili peppers, and the word capsicum rarely appears on a menu or a grocery list. In other English speaking countries the same word is everyday language, and it usually means the mild, sweet fruit only.

The spelling changes with the country too. American English writes chili, with one L. British and Australian English write chilli, with two Ls. In New Mexico and in much of Mexico, the spelling chile is used for the plant and the fruit, while chili in that usage means the dish made with meat, beans, tomatoes, and chile powder. The Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University uses chile for the plant and chili for the dish, and notes that the spelling has a long and varied history.

None of these spellings is wrong. They are regional habits, and knowing them helps when reading recipes, seed catalogs, or gardening guides from another country. A recipe from Australia that calls for one capsicum wants a bell pepper. A recipe from New Mexico that calls for chile wants a hot or mild capsicum fruit, not the stew.

The Plant Behind the Name

A capsicum plant is a warm weather plant that grows as a tender perennial in places without frost and as an annual where frost occurs. In warm climates it can live for more than one season, but in most of the United States it is planted fresh each spring and killed back by the first frost in fall. Ornamental types described by the University of Florida IFAS Extension grow 1 to 4 feet tall with a rounded shape, and food types are similar in size, though some varieties grow taller in a long, warm season.

The leaves are simple and oval with smooth edges, usually dark green, though some ornamental varieties have purple or near black leaves. The flowers are small, white or pale purple, and not very showy. They can pollinate themselves, so a single plant can set fruit without another pepper plant nearby. After flowering, the fruit forms and ripens through a sequence of colors. Several colors often appear on one plant at the same time, because fruits at different stages ripen side by side.

Capsicums need warmth and sun. Growing guides put the ideal temperature range at 21 to 29 degrees Celsius, or 70 to 84 degrees Fahrenheit, in moist but not waterlogged loamy soil. The plants tolerate temperatures down to about 12 degrees Celsius, or 54 degrees Fahrenheit, but they do not like cold, and they are sensitive to frost. At very high temperatures, from 30 to 38 degrees Celsius, or 86 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, pollen loses viability and flowers are much less likely to set fruit. Full sun, well-drained soil, and steady moisture are the basic requirements, and most varieties reach maturity about 65 to 75 days after transplanting, according to University of Florida IFAS Extension production guidance.

The name itself may come from the Latin word capsa, meaning box, perhaps referring to the hollow pod shape of the fruit. Another suggestion traces it to the Greek word kapto, meaning to gulp, perhaps referring to the bite of the hot types. The origin is not settled, and reference works present both ideas as possibilities rather than as fact. The word pepper came into use because the heat of chili peppers reminded Europeans of black pepper, the spice from the unrelated plant Piper nigrum. There is no botanical relationship between capsicum and black pepper, and the shared name is a historical accident of taste.

The Five Cultivated Species

The genus holds many species, but only five are widely grown for food. Each one has its own character, and each one gave the world a different set of familiar peppers. Capsicum annuum is the most widely grown species in the genus, and it alone covers an enormous range, from sweet bell peppers to jalapenos, cayenne, poblanos, and the New Mexico chile types.

The other species are mostly wild plants, and they matter to science and to breeding even though they are rarely eaten. Breeders cross wild and cultivated types to bring in traits such as disease resistance, tolerance of heat or cold, and new flavors. Many types of peppers have been bred for heat, size, and yield, and breeding programs at universities in the United States, including New Mexico State University and Cornell University, continue to develop regionally adapted varieties. Centuries of this kind of selection by growers turned small wild fruits into the wide range of peppers sold today, a process explained in our guide to what artificial selection is.

There is one more number worth noting. The exact count of species in the genus depends on which reference a reader consults. Older references list 20 to 27 species. A monograph published in 2022 recognized 43 species, together with five infraspecific varieties. The difference comes from how botanists draw the lines between closely related wild plants, not from any disagreement about the five cultivated species, which are settled.

Sweet Peppers and Hot Peppers: What Makes the Difference

The difference between a sweet pepper and a hot pepper is a single chemical family. Hot peppers make capsaicinoids, a group of compounds that includes capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin. Sweet peppers make little or none of them. The best known sweet pepper, the bell pepper, is a cultivar of Capsicum annuum that carries a recessive gene that eliminates capsaicin, so it has no heat at all and scores zero on the Scoville scale. Other sweet types within the same species include Cubanelle peppers, Italian frying peppers, and sweet banana peppers.

Heat is not spread evenly through the fruit. Most of the capsaicin in a hot pepper sits in the pale inner ribs and the tissue that holds the seeds, known as the placenta. The seeds themselves do not produce capsaicin, though the white pith around them holds the highest concentration. That is why removing the ribs and seeds from a jalapeno makes it noticeably milder, and why the tip of a pepper can taste milder than the part near the stem.

The amount of heat varies a great deal, even within one variety. Genetics sets the range, and the growing environment moves the result up or down. Soil, temperature, water, sunlight, and how ripe the fruit is when picked all affect the final capsaicin level. Two peppers from the same plant can taste different, and the same variety grown in two places can test at different heat levels. Published Scoville numbers are therefore ranges or averages, not fixed values for every fruit.

Color is a guide to ripeness, not to heat. A green jalapeno and a red jalapeno from the same variety differ in sweetness and flavor, because the fruit gets sweeter as it ripens and produces more sugar in the red stage, but the color alone does not tell a shopper how hot a pepper will be. The variety decides the heat. The color only shows how ripe it is.

Capsaicin: The Compound Behind the Burn

Capsaicin is the main compound that makes hot peppers feel hot. It is a lipophilic chemical, which means it dissolves in fats and oils rather than in water. That simple fact explains a familiar piece of kitchen advice: a glass of water does little to calm the burn from a hot pepper, while milk or other fatty food helps, because the fat can dissolve the capsaicin and carry it away from the mouth. Alcohol also dissolves it, which is why the original Scoville test used an alcohol solution.

Capsaicin does not burn the mouth the way heat burns skin. It binds to receptors that normally signal heat and pain, and the brain reads the signal as burning. Mammals have those receptors, so most mammals find hot peppers unpleasant and avoid them. Birds do not have the same receptors, so they can eat very hot fruits without discomfort and spread the seeds in their droppings. Researchers at the Chile Pepper Institute believe capsicums evolved capsaicinoids for exactly that reason, to keep mammals from eating the fruit while letting birds carry the seeds to new ground.

The compound is not only a food chemical. An aerosol extract of capsaicin is the active ingredient in pepper spray, used by law enforcement and for personal defense. Capsaicin in vegetable oils or garden products is also used as a natural insecticide, because insects are deterred by it. In the plant, the secretion of capsaicin helps protect the fruit from being eaten by insects as well as by mammals.

Two related compounds do most of the work. Capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin together account for more than 90 percent of the pungency in capsicum fruits, and they occur in a ratio of about 6 to 4. At least 11 capsaicinoids have been reported in total, but the minor ones contribute far less. Pure capsaicin measures 16 million Scoville heat units, which gives a sense of how concentrated the pure compound is compared with even the hottest pepper.

The Scoville Scale, Explained

The Scoville scale is the standard way of ranking how hot a pepper is. It is named for Wilbur Scoville, a pharmacist who created the test in 1912. His original method was a tasting test. A panel of five tasters tasted a solution of ground pepper dissolved in alcohol, diluted step by step with sweetened water, until the heat could no longer be detected. If the panel could barely detect heat when one part of the alcohol solution was mixed into 50,000 parts of sweetened water, the pepper was rated at 50,000 Scoville heat units, or SHU. The method was simple and easy to understand, but it was subjective, because it depended on the tasters and their sensitivity, and tasters became less sensitive after repeated exposure.

Modern testing no longer relies on tasters. Laboratories measure the capsaicinoids directly with high performance liquid chromatography, known as HPLC, and convert the chemical reading into Scoville heat units. The American Spice Trade Association advocates HPLC with ultraviolet detection for Scoville testing, and the same approach has been adopted by the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists. To convert from analytical units such as parts per million of capsaicin to SHU, the reading is multiplied by 16, because pure capsaicin measures 16 million Scoville units. The result is a number that can be compared across laboratories and across varieties.

The scale is often grouped into bands. Nonpungent peppers measure 0 to 700 SHU. Mildly pungent peppers measure 700 to 3,000 SHU. Moderately pungent peppers measure 3,000 to 25,000 SHU. Highly pungent peppers measure 25,000 to 80,000 SHU. Very highly pungent peppers measure above 80,000 SHU. The bands are a guide rather than a strict rule, because heat varies with growing conditions, but they give a reader a quick way to place an unfamiliar pepper.

Two cautions belong with the table. First, every number is a range or an average, and an individual pepper can fall outside it. A jalapeno grown in a hot, dry summer can test hotter than one grown in a cool, wet one. Second, the record for the hottest pepper changes as breeders develop new varieties. Guinness World Records recognized Pepper X as the world’s hottest pepper in 2023, taking the title from the Carolina Reaper. Readers who see a different name at the top of a list are probably looking at a newer result, not a mistake.

How Capsicum Is Used in the Kitchen

Capsicum fruits can be eaten raw or cooked, and they are used in cooking all over the world. Raw peppers are chopped into salads, sliced into strips for sandwiches, or served with dips. Cooked peppers are roasted whole or in pieces, fried, stuffed with fillings such as cheese, meat, or rice, or stirred into dishes where they add flavor, color, and texture. They are a main ingredient in many salsas and sauces, and they can be preserved by drying, pickling, or freezing. Dried capsicum can be used whole, or ground into flakes or powders. Frozen capsicum is used in stews, soups, and salsas, where texture matters less than flavor.

Dried and ground capsicum has its own names and traditions. Paprika is the ground spice made from dried capsicums, hot or sweet, and the name comes from Central Europe, where the same word also means the fruit itself. In Spain, ground chiles are a key ingredient in chorizo, which is called picante when hot chile is added and dulce when it is not. Paprika also plays a central role in rice dishes and in dishes such as Galician style squid. In Hungary, sweet yellow capsicum, along with tomatoes, is the main ingredient of lecso, a pepper and tomato stew. In Bulgaria, Serbia, and North Macedonia, capsicums are eaten in salads such as shopska salata, fried and served with a dip, or stuffed with minced meat and rice, and they are the main ingredient in the tomato and capsicum dips lyutenitsa and ajvar.

The hot types traveled furthest in cooking. After the Portuguese brought chile peppers to their possessions in Africa and Asia, the peppers spread through South, Southeast, and East Asia, especially in India, Thailand, Vietnam, China, and Korea. New cultivars were developed in those countries, and the peppers were used alongside or in place of existing hot spices such as black pepper and Sichuan pepper, giving rise to modern forms of dishes such as chana masala, tom yum, laziji, and kimchi. In the Americas, the New Mexico chile, a cultivar group of Capsicum annuum, became a mainstay of New Mexican cuisine, and Maya and Aztec people of Mesoamerica used capsicum fruit in cocoa drinks as a flavoring long before Europeans arrived.

Sweet peppers have a quieter but equally wide role. They are eaten raw in salads and sandwiches, roasted and peeled for side dishes, stuffed and baked, or cooked into sauces and stews. Their flavor is mild and slightly sweet, and it deepens as the fruit ripens. A green bell pepper tastes grassy and slightly bitter. A red one from the same variety tastes sweeter and softer. The difference is ripeness, and it is one reason cooks choose a color to match the dish.

From the Americas to the World

Capsicum began in the Americas and stayed there for thousands of years before it reached the rest of the world. The plants were domesticated and cultivated at least since 3000 BC, as shown by remains of chili peppers found in pottery from Puebla and Oaxaca in Mexico. People selected wild peppers for larger pods, different flavors, and different colors, and that selection is why thousands of varieties exist today. The early wild peppers were very small and round, and they spread by birds for tens of thousands of years, from Bolivia to the southern part of what is now the United States and south to the tip of Chile and Argentina.

Europeans met capsicum after 1492. Spanish ships brought the fruits back to Europe, together with cocoa, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tobacco, maize, beans, and turkeys. The Spanish also carried them to their colonies in the Philippines, from where they spread into Asia. The Portuguese brought them to their possessions in Africa and Asia, including India. Hot varieties were especially welcomed, because they could enliven an otherwise plain diet, including during times of dietary restriction such as religious observances, when rich food was set aside.

The spread was fast, because the plants grow easily in warm climates and the dried fruits travel well. Within a few generations, capsicum was a normal part of cooking across southern Europe, Africa, and Asia. In Ethiopia, the hot Capsicum frutescens type known as berbere was so important to the cuisine by the 19th century that it was grown extensively in the warmer areas wherever the soil was suitable. In India, chiles became so central that many dishes now seem incomplete without them, even though the plant arrived there only in the 1500s. That speed of adoption is one of the clearest signs of how useful the plant proved to be.

The story also explains the names. Chile comes from the Nahuatl word chilli, the language of the Aztec people, which named a larger cultivated variety. Aji comes from the Quechua term for capsicum, and it is still the word used for peppers across much of South America. Pepper comes from the European comparison with black pepper. Each name carries a piece of the journey the plant made from a wild Bolivian fruit to a kitchen staple on every inhabited continent.

Growing Capsicum at Home

Capsicum is one of the most popular vegetables to grow in a home garden, and the reasons are simple: the plants are productive, the fruits are useful, and a small number of plants gives a household plenty to eat. Most gardeners buy young plants from a nursery or start seeds indoors, then move the plants outside after the danger of frost has passed. Seeds started indoors need warmth to germinate, and a heat mat helps. Seedlings do best on a sunny windowsill or under lights until they are strong enough to go outside.

Site and soil matter more than anything else. Peppers need at least six hours of sun a day, and they do better with eight to ten. They do best in well-drained loamy soil dressed with compost, and they need steady moisture without sitting in water. Plants are usually spaced about 18 inches to 2 feet apart, depending on the variety, because crowded plants stay damp and produce less. A mulch layer helps hold moisture and keeps the soil temperature even, which peppers prefer.

Because peppers belong to the nightshade family, they share soil and growing needs with tomatoes, and gardeners often grow them side by side in the same sunny bed. Our guide to growing tomatoes in pots covers the same warm weather, full sun approach that peppers need, and the two crops are often planted in the same season. Gardeners who rotate crops should also note that peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and potatoes are all nightshades, so the same bed should not hold nightshades year after year.

Companion planting can help as well. Some plants grown nearby support peppers by attracting pollinators, shading the soil, or confusing pests, while others compete for the same nutrients and do more harm than good. Our guide to companion plants for peppers lists the pairings that work well and the ones to avoid, so a gardener can plan the bed before planting.

Harvest is a matter of taste. Green peppers can be picked as soon as they reach full size, and they will taste mild and slightly grassy. Peppers left on the plant will change color as they ripen, turning yellow, orange, or red, and they will taste sweeter. Hot peppers also change as they ripen, and most growers pick them when they reach their final color for the fullest flavor. Regular picking encourages the plant to keep producing, so a gardener who harvests often usually gets more fruit over the season than one who leaves fruit on the plant.

One warning applies to ornamental peppers. They are edible, and researchers at the Chile Pepper Institute note that as long as it is a true capsicum, it is edible, even an ornamental one. But ornamental types are grown for their bright colors and compact shape, not for flavor, and their taste can be unpredictable. The University of Florida IFAS Extension advises keeping them away from places where young children could come into contact with them, because the fruits can irritate if eaten or handled. Grow them for the display, and eat the varieties bred for the kitchen.

Capsicum, Pepper, Chili: Clearing Up the Confusion

The confusion around capsicum comes down to three words that overlap but are not the same. Capsicum is the botanical name for the genus. Pepper is the common English name for the fruit, borrowed from black pepper because of the shared heat. Chili, chile, or chilli is the name for the hot types, taken from the Nahuatl word. A bell pepper is a capsicum and a pepper, but it is not a chili. A jalapeno is all three. A habanero is all three. Black pepper is none of them, because it comes from Piper nigrum, a vine in a different family, and its heat comes from a different compound, piperine, not capsaicin.

The same confusion appears in the spice aisle. Paprika is ground dried capsicum, and it can be sweet or hot depending on the variety used. Chili powder in the United States is usually a blend that includes ground chiles with cumin, oregano, and other spices, so it is not the same as pure ground chile. Cayenne pepper is ground dried cayenne, a hot Capsicum annuum cultivar, and it is used in small amounts because a little goes a long way. Crushed red pepper is dried and flaked hot capsicum, seeds and all. Reading the label shows which one a jar holds, and the variety on the label is usually more useful than the brand name.

There is also a difference between a vegetable and a fruit that causes confusion. Botanically, a capsicum is a fruit, because it develops from the flower of the plant and holds the seeds. In the kitchen it is treated as a vegetable, because it is used in savory dishes rather than sweet ones. Tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash sit in the same position: fruits by botany, vegetables by cooking. The distinction matters only when a reader is sorting out a botanical claim from a cooking claim, and most of the time the cooking use is the one that counts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is capsicum the same as a bell pepper?

A bell pepper is one kind of capsicum, but capsicum covers much more. Capsicum is the name of the whole genus, which includes bell peppers and also jalapenos, habaneros, cayenne, and dozens of other types. In Australia and New Zealand the word capsicum is used the way Americans use bell pepper, so an Australian recipe that calls for a capsicum usually means a bell pepper. In the United States, the two words are not interchangeable, and capsicum is the broader scientific term.

Is capsicum the same as chili?

Chili is a narrower word than capsicum. Chili usually means the hot types of capsicum, such as jalapenos, serranos, and habaneros. Sweet types such as bell peppers are capsicums but they are not chilies, because they make no capsaicin. All chilies are capsicums, but not all capsicums are chilies. The spelling changes by country: chili in the United States, chilli in Britain and Australia, and chile in New Mexico and Mexico.

Is capsicum a fruit or a vegetable?

Botanically it is a fruit, because it grows from the flower of the plant and contains the seeds. In cooking it is treated as a vegetable, because it is used in savory dishes. The same is true of tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash. For shopping, cooking, and gardening, the vegetable treatment is the one that applies. For a botany question, the fruit answer is the correct one.

Why are some capsicums hot and others not?

Heat depends on whether the plant makes capsaicinoids, the compounds that create the burning sensation. Hot types make them. Sweet types make little or none. The bell pepper carries a recessive gene that eliminates capsaicin, so it scores zero on the Scoville scale. The amount of heat also varies with the variety and with growing conditions, so two peppers of the same variety can test at different levels.

What is the hottest capsicum?

Guinness World Records recognized Pepper X as the world’s hottest pepper in 2023. Before that, the Carolina Reaper held the title, with an average of 1,641,183 Scoville heat units in Guinness testing. The record changes as breeders develop hotter varieties, so a list that names a different pepper at the top may simply be newer. Pure capsaicin, the compound itself, measures 16 million Scoville heat units, far above any whole pepper.

Can you eat ornamental capsicum peppers?

Yes, as long as it is a true capsicum it is edible, including ornamental types, according to researchers at the Chile Pepper Institute. But ornamental peppers are bred for bright colors and compact shape, not for flavor, so their taste can be unpredictable, and some are very hot. The University of Florida IFAS Extension advises keeping them where young children cannot easily reach them, because the fruits can irritate if eaten or handled.

Is capsicum the same as black pepper?

No. Black pepper comes from Piper nigrum, a vine in a different plant family, and its heat comes from piperine, not capsaicin. Capsicum got the name pepper because the heat of hot types reminded Europeans of black pepper. The two plants are not related, and they are not interchangeable in cooking.

How do you grow capsicum at home?

Give peppers full sun, warm soil, and steady moisture, and plant them outside only after the danger of frost has passed. Space plants about 18 inches to 2 feet apart in well-drained soil with compost, and pick fruits often to keep the plant producing. Most varieties mature about 65 to 75 days after transplanting. Green fruits can be picked as soon as they reach full size, and fruits left to ripen will turn yellow, orange, or red and taste sweeter.

Sources & references

• 1. Wikipedia, "Capsicum," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsicum (accessed 11 Nov 2026). Genus and family, native range, species counts and the 2022 monograph, the five cultivated species, etymology, regional names, fruit as a berry, capsaicin location and the bell pepper gene, history and domestication, cuisine and paprika, Pepper X recognition in 2023.
• 2. New Mexico State University, Chile Pepper Institute, "Chile Peppers 101: NMSU's Chile Pepper Institute breaks down the science of the spicy fruit," https://cpi.nmsu.edu/news-events/2021/01/nmsus-chile-pepper-institue-breaks-down-the-science-of-spicy-fruit.html (accessed 11 Nov 2026). Bolivian origin, thousands of varieties, capsaicinoids and bird dispersal, bell pepper with no heat, heat classes including super hot above one million SHU, green versus red sweetness, vitamins A and C, ornamental peppers edible.
• 3. Crapnell, R. D., and Banks, C. E., "Electroanalytical overview: the pungency of chile and chilli products determined via the sensing of capsaicinoids," Analyst, 2021, 146, 2769-2783, https://pubs.rsc.org/am/content/articlepdf/2021/an/d1an00086a (accessed 11 Nov 2026). Scoville test created by Wilbur Scoville in 1912, panel of five tasters and the dilution method, HPLC replacing tasting, pure capsaicin at 16 million SHU, capsaicin to dihydrocapsaicin ratio of 6 to 4, pungency bands, Carolina Reaper at 1,641,183 SHU, Chile Pepper Institute established 1992.
• 4. University of Florida IFAS Extension, "Capsicum annuum: Ornamental Pepper" (FPS105/FP105), https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fp105 (accessed 11 Nov 2026). Tender perennial grown as a warm season annual, height 1 to 4 feet, full sun and well-drained soil, fruit a 1 to 3 inch berry, killed back by first frost, ornamental fruits irritating if eaten or handled.
• 5. University of Florida IFAS Extension, "Pepper Production," Chapter 13 (HS732), Frey et al., https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/CV130.pdf (accessed 11 Nov 2026). Bell pepper as Capsicum annuum in Solanaceae, habanero and bird's eye pepper as Capsicum chinense, habanero 100,000 to 350,000 SHU, serrano 10,000 to 23,000 SHU, 65 to 75 days to maturity from transplant.