Capsicum cornutum

Capsicum cornutum is a wild Atlantic Forest species endemic to south-eastern Brazil, confined to small areas in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The name currently used for the species was published in Capsicum in 1956, but its earlier basionym, Bassovia cornuta, dates to 1878. It belongs to the Atlantic Forest clade and is one of the black-seeded south-eastern Brazilian wild capsicums associated with montane Mata Atlântica habitats.

It grows as a perennial shrub, usually about 1.0 to 2.5 m tall, with a strongly pubescent habit. The leaves are broad, green, and hairy, and the species is especially noted for dense pubescence of long non-glandular trichomes on the leaves, pedicels, and calyces. Field reports place it in mountain forest environments from about 500 to almost 2000 m above sea level.

The flowers are carried on geniculate pedicels and have a white stellate corolla with green to purple spotting inside. One of the main characters used to recognise the species is the calyx, which usually has 5 to 10 long teeth, often erect or spreading, giving the plant a horned look reflected in the name cornutum. This variable but prominent toothed calyx is one of the defining structural traits of the species.

The fruit are small, globose berries about 7 to 10 mm across. They are green when immature and ripen to greenish-golden yellow to yellow, and the seeds are black. Reports on pungency differ, with sources describing the fruit as slightly pungent, weakly pungent, or more distinctly pungent in some field material, but the species is generally treated as a lightly hot wild pepper rather than a high-heat type. The combination of dense hairiness, geniculate flower stalks, white spotted flowers, long calyx teeth, yellow ripe fruit, and black seeds gives Capsicum cornutum a distinct identity among the wild peppers of south-eastern Brazil.