Chile-Heads:
I was harvesting the peppers from my potted Caribbean Red Habanero the
other day, and picked off 12 or so pods. To make a long story short, I
started dicing them up to make hot sauce out of them, and I noticed
something unusual: 75% of the pods had fully-formed, but smaller, pods
_inside_ of them!
I cut these miniature pods open, and they look like their bigger
brothers. They have a complete membrane running down the middle of them.
Both the full-sized and miniature pods are extremely hot; they're the
hottest that I ever had, and they're hotter than the Francisca and Red
Savina Habaneros that I also grew this season.
I managed to slice open three of them without damaging the internal
pods, and took a picture of them. The picture is available here:
http://world.std.com/~loki/chile/images/CaribbeanRed.jpg
This plant is from seeds that were leftovers from the 2000 season. I no
longer have the packet, but I think these were packaged by NK Lawn & Garden.
I saved the seeds from these mutants, but it will be a crapshoot if they
come up next year. I wasn't planning on saving any seeds this season, so
no precautions were taken to prevent cross-pollination. Perhaps I'll take
some cuttings and try to overwinter them instead.
In my ten years of chile pepper growing, I've only come across one other
mutation: My Pepper Gal cayenne plant had an abundance of three-pod
peppers hanging from one stem. Unfortunately, I didn't take any
pictures...
Regards,
Greg
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