Capsicum hookerianum

Capsicum hookerianum is a wild South American species first published in 1849 as Brachistus hookerianus by John Miers and later transferred to Capsicum by Kuntze in 1891. The type history is tied to Ecuador, and later lectotypification work fixed the name to Jameson material from Guayaquil. Modern treatments place the species in western Ecuador and northern Peru, with the 2022 monograph restricting it to extra-Andean western Ecuador, including Guayas, El Oro, Loja and Manabí, and to northern Peru in Tumbes.

The plant is a bushy shrub, usually about 1 to 3 m tall, associated with low elevations around 100 to 800 m and with coastal to extra-Andean habitats rather than high Andean mountain zones. Its leaves are membranous and paired, often unequal, green above and lighter beneath, with a narrow oval to strongly attenuate shape that tapers to a point. The stems and vegetative parts are described as mostly bearing simple hairs, giving the species a softly pubescent look rather than a dense woolly one.

The flowers are one of the main identifying features of Capsicum hookerianum. They are carried on non-geniculate pedicels and have a brilliant yellow to yellowish subcampanulate or campanulate corolla without spotting. The calyx is especially distinctive, being conspicuously 10-toothed, often appearing as five longer and five shorter teeth, a structure repeatedly highlighted in taxonomic treatments as the key character separating it from similar wild species.

The fruit are small, round berries that ripen to orange-red to red. They are treated as non-pungent, and the seeds are brown to dark brown, fitting the general seed colour pattern of the Andean wild capsicums. The combination of lowland western Ecuador and northern Peru distribution, bushy shrubby habit, pointed leaves, brilliant yellow unspotted flowers, and its unusual 10-toothed calyx gives Capsicum hookerianum a very distinct identity within the wild species of the genus.