Capsicum campylopodium

Capsicum campylopodium is a wild Brazilian species first published by Sendtner in 1846. It is treated as an accepted species by Kew and is placed within the Atlantic Forest clade, with its native range centred in eastern and south-eastern Brazil, including records from Bahia, Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro. It grows as a subshrub or shrub in the wet tropical biome and is one of the characteristic wild Capsicum species of the Atlantic Forest region.

The plant has paired leaves that are unequal in size but similar in shape, with the larger leaves described as ovate. The foliage is green, and published descriptions place the species among the Brazilian wild capsicums with small flowers and a distinctive toothless, hemispherical calyx marked by five evident nerves. Its pedicels are clearly geniculate, which is one of the features repeatedly used to separate it from similar taxa in the group.

The flowers are white with yellow to golden spotting on the lobes and limbs, and the species is especially noted for its heterodynamous androecium, with three shorter stamens and two longer stamens. This combination of white corollas with yellow or golden spotting, a toothless calyx, and bent pedicels is central to the identity of Capsicum campylopodium in taxonomic treatments and field discussions.

The fruit are small and mature from green to a greenish-golden yellow or yellow colour. They are described as laterally compressed, and together with the floral characters they form the main visual markers used to recognise the species. Published Capsicum references place the ripe fruit of this Atlantic Forest group in the scarcely pungent to non-pungent range, so Capsicum campylopodium is generally treated as effectively heatless in comparison with most cultivated chillies.