Capsicum flexuosum

Capsicum flexuosum is a wild South American species first published by Sendtner in 1846. It is treated as an accepted species by Kew and is the sole recognised member of the Flexuosum clade. Its native range is centred in south-eastern and southern Brazil and extends into neighbouring parts of north-eastern Argentina, with additional records and horticultural references also linking it to Paraguay.

It grows as a woody subshrub or shrub, usually about 0.5 to 2.0 m tall, though some plants can become larger. The plant is highly branched and is noted for narrow, shiny, somewhat rigid green leaves, giving it a more wiry and shrubby look than many cultivated peppers. The flowers are borne singly or in small groups on pendent, non-geniculate pedicels, with a white campanulate to partly rotate corolla marked by greenish or yellow-brown spotting, and some populations can also show purple spotting. The calyx lacks obvious teeth, which is one of the characters repeatedly used to separate it from some related wild species.

The fruit are tiny berries, commonly around 5 to 7 mm across, with blackish-brown to black seeds and a juicy flesh. The species is generally described as scarcely pungent to mildly pungent, and several sources also note an unusual sweetness for a wild Capsicum. In Brazil it is known and mostly used from the wild, and germplasm records note local cultivation in Porto Alegre, while other references state that the berries are sometimes used as a spice.

A major published conflict exists over ripe fruit colour. Modern monographic and phylogenetic sources describe the mature fruit as greenish-golden yellow, while a number of older and horticultural references describe red to orange-red ripe berries. Aside from that colour conflict, the core identity of the species is consistent: a woody wild pepper with small spotted flowers, black seeds, very small berries, and mild to low pungency.