So Fully Ripe Edible Green Tomatoes exists, Fully Ripe Edible Green Tomatillos Exist, even fully ripe Edible Greenberry Black Nightshades exists but do fully ripe Green Peppers also exist (Or could be bred to exist)?
Fully Ripe Green Tomatoes still look different from unripe green tomatoes (Translucent Skin behind darker softer flesh vs Bright shiny green frim for unripe tomatoes). It’s a bit harder to tell with fully ripe Green Tomatillo but are usually a lil softer & more lime green. Fully Ripe Greenberry Black Nightshade is very easy to tell because they’re almost Lime-yellow. What would the thing be for a Fully ripe Green Pepper (Other than fully formed seeds)?
I know a Green Bell Pepper is just an unripe Orange, Red or Yellow Pepper picked green but what would a fully ripe Green Pepper look like? Is there a pepper variety that remains green when fully ripe or lacks the color pigments like with green tomatoes.
From the replies there do appear to be some cultivars that do stay green or olive but no specific varieties were mentioned by reddit user ChilliCrosser for me to look up & verify, other than “Basically anything that’s an underlying yellow pod but has the chlorophyll retainer mutation will stay green-ish when ripe”.
Apparently the same mutation also causes red peppers to be brown? Any thoughts/affirmations?
I looked up the Hot Pepper cultivar “Gator-Jigsaw” (Mentioned by one of the replies). Is this as green as fully ripe peppers get?
The closely related Sister Pepper (Capsicum) Genus Lycianthes has Fully Edible Green fruit when ripe too! This is the Ripe fruit of Lycianthes moziniana.
I have varieties of both sweet bell peppers and hot chillies that stay green until they spoil and fall off the bush. They never have color other than green under my growing conditions. Maybe in a warmer climate, or in a greenhouse they would have changed color, but not in my case.
Interesting, I hope you can take pictures, I’m so curious as to what kind of green they change into? Can you still tell when it’s fully ripe? or do you suspect they simply don’t ripen fully? Are the seeds at least viable?
The season is over here, I will take a look if I have any older pictures. Basically I harvest them not later than when I see first “wrinkles” on the fruit, it means they are past their prime. I try to harvest them earlier, when they show first signs of softness. Seeds inside are ripe way earlier.
Nice! If seeds mature inside way before than you got a truly unique variety I haven’t seen anywhere else. I wonder why aren’t these kinds of green bell peppers grown commercially? What did they taste like? Sweet but green?
We do have them in supermarkets. You go there and you usually have 4 baskets with bell peppers - green, yellow, orange and red. Also, we have small trays with green, yellow and red, one of each.
Green ones are always the cheapest, since they have less sweetness.
I have bought such peppers and I have collected and planted their seeds, they have kept their color. The problem was they were F1, so although color stayed the same, they differ a lot in taste and sweetness.
I have also planted green, orange and red Ramiro F1 seeds collected from store bought fruits, and the outcome was the same.
Same situation here in the U.S., they sell them Red, Orange, Yellow & Green. I was told the Green ones are simply Orange or Red bell peppers picked upripe, hence why the seeds aren’t always plump & filled in.
Very very interesting, I was convinced the only way to get green peppers was to pick them unripe. So you saying the Green peppers from the grocery store actually grew into fully ripe seed mature green peppers too? So many people have tried with green peppers & they eventually ripen into a red, yellow or orange color. Do you what is the variety that remains green? I want to look it up cuz as far as I know fully ripe green peppers don’t exist here, only unripe green ones do.
There aren’t fully ripe green annuums. Those that you get in the stores are just plain raw. Some varieties, like jalapenos, have been bred to be collected way raw and therefore you might never see them fully ripe. Picking generally slows down the ripening and it might take a month before they ripen. If they don’t, the most likely reason is that they weren’t ripe enough at the time of picking and thus don’t have the ability to ripen. Jalapenos at least tend to get cracked way before they are fully ripe which might make them also spoil before they can ripen.
Only in the chinense there are those that stay green when ripe, although they also get a little hint of colour to show that they are ripe. I don’t think there are any reasons why you couldn’t breed annuums to be ripe when green. Biggest reason why there aren’t is probably the fact that annuums generally aren’t grown as novelty and are more to produce a bulk crop where as chinense have been bred for unique features also. As the species cross easily it shouldn’t be hard at least to bring the trait to annuum.
I could only find information of poisonous varieties or species. Is this some new breeding for edible fruits and where there might be more solid information? Considering greeness of the fruit, it would logical colour if the fruit is poisonous. No reason to advertise ripeness, right? The little information that I could find fast suggests that naturally it’s poisonous, hence the colour.
What I am saying is that I have collected seeds from store bought peppers and I have sown them mid March. I have transplanted them to outdoor pots in the end of May. During the season, until Oct. 10th, all of them kept colors of their parents. I cannot say what would happen if I could keep them longer.
Why do you say raw in place of the word unripe? Botantically I know the fruits are unripe but I never heard any chef or foodie call them unripe, is it unappetizing to do so? Is this why no one calls summer squash & Zucchinni Unripe even if they Botanically are?
Is that how you actually Identify the variety? I’ve seen Red, Yellow, Purple & Orange Jalapenos sold in gardening catalouges, do they all also crack a little?
Ah, I see the Green ripe fruit trait simply hasn’t been bred into C. annum yet. That would explain the Gator Jigsaw variety, which is a C. chinense/C. frutescens (Both are basically same species). Out of curiosity, what could I expect for flavor? Would the Ripe Green Bell Pepper be sweet like it’s Red, Purple, White, Brown, Orange & Yellow Counterparts?
Only problem is the heat, I’d love to breed that trait out.
Btw, do you know if the Green Ripe Fruit trait also exists in Capsicum baccantum? Will I have to Cross it over to that species from C. chinense?
You have good reasoning, altho edible to whom is the question. Lots of Red plants “advertise” a bright color for birds who can digest some poisons we can’t (& Vice Versa). How do Green Tomatillo’s exist? I was thinking the same thing but Green Tomatillo do not fit with that construct/theory. Same with Green Tomatoes (Altho some of the wild Green Tomatoes like Solanum pennellii is highly inedible according to Joseph Lofthouse).
What stands out are the Green Kiwi Berries, those are very edible but green so I have no idea who the plant would “advertise” for.
However in the Solanaceae, Unripe fruits are almost always green & Almost always Poisonous raw. (Unripe Peppers being an exception, cuz the poison in peppers is the exact spiciness which we actually enjoy). By poison I mean the plant’s mechanism to stop animal from eating unripe fruit, it’s just with peppers, that didn’t work on Humans as intended .
Even wild is the Bittersweet Nightshade follows this rule too, Green berries are very toxic but Ripe Red berries fail to produce toxins, same with Black Nightshade Berries & so many other Solanaceae.
Hmm… Have you tried over-wintering those same exact peppers for a 2nd season?
No, it’s a very common trait. I can’t say if all that are sold as jalapenos get crack as many are new varieties created by crosses.
Chinense and frutescens are very much different species. As far as I know, frutescens is more closely related to annuum. All of them belong to the same complex so they cross easily.
No.
They are also husked. Ofcourse there are always exceptions between species depending how seeds are supposed to be spread.
wait, so they all aren’t a species complex? Some argue it’s all just 1 super diverse species, does that make sense? Or have they simply not have been introgressed thoroughly like with Cucurbita pepo & Cucurbita texana forming 2 subspecies?
@WojciechG by slow peppers do you mean different species like Capsicum pubecens & Capsicum baccantum?
Was tired and I also don’t notice words always, so I answered as without why at the start. Finnish word for unripe and raw is the same and has the same root as english raw, so it’s just a mental lapse.
I don’t know what you are trying to say here. They are all closely related, but different species. I suppose some are quite stuck in the idea that to be different species, they couldn’t have fertile offspring (as it was sometimes thought). Now we have a little different idieas and rightly so if you ask me.
Baccatum at least in my experience isn’t that much slower than annuum. The fastest were about a week behind my fastest annuum last summer (and similarly before). Pubescens are a bit more, but I don’t have enough experience to judge them. I would say the main cause for slowness isn’t speed, but unsuitable growing conditions or climate.
A species complex is when a group of species are so closely related that they blur the lines between what defines that species, almost becoming 1 species (At that point they all start looking like subspecies). I’m hoping to cross all memebers of the complex so it becomes like 1 species capturing as much diversity as possible. Crossing the ripe green flesh color of C. chinense so I can make Green Bell Pepper powder, along with all the other colors.
Interesting, so C. baccatum fruited for you quite quickly? I thought they took longer being a more tropical species & requiring more sun but also growing taller on average? Do you also over winter your pepper plants? I’ve heard that’s the only way some people got ripe fruit from C. bacantum.
Ok. This still doesn’t mean that they are that releted. It’s all relative, and to be honest, quite pointless trying to exactly define labels. I think it’s enough to know that they cross easily.
Baccatum has spread over to area that encompasses tropics to more mountainous areas so ofcourse there is same variation how much warmth they need. I would still say that the success rate of varieties haven’t been that much worse than that of annuum. If something fails, I generally rather blame myself or the climate than plants. You never get better at growing them if you think it’s just intrinsic for the species. There haven’t been many species so far that have been impossible here, no matter what others say.
Baccatum grow a little taller on average than annuum, but react more easily to lack of light and thus might grow a lot taller. I have overwintered some, but lately it’s been mostly chinenses and unique crosses I had in those. This year I didn’t leave any because it’s too much of a hastle in a small appartment. It doesn’t help that much. They grow so fast from the seed if they just have the right conditions.
Agreed, the important thing is they cross. There are just too many species so I’m trying to simplify species & understand which differences are important or not.
Nice! I was hoping to breed a heatless version of Aji amarillo, the famous peruvian fruity pepper that taste like tropical fruity candy. If I can get it to ripen in a timely annual manner like an C. annum, then it makes it that much easier. I just remember PepperGeek saying baccatums take a long time to ripen fully (Maybe it was just Aji amarillo), but I’m glad to know you had a different experience so there’s hope.
Very interesting, annualizing C. baccatum is exactly the kind of thing I want! Don’t they call Capsicum annum becuase it’s the species with the fastest days to maturity like an annual (Even tho All Peppers are technically perennials)?
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