Capsicum parvifolium

Capsicum parvifolium is a wild South American species first published in 1846 from Brazilian material. It is accepted by Kew, with a native range extending from northern Colombia to northern Venezuela and north-eastern Brazil to northern Minas Gerais, where it grows primarily in the seasonally dry tropical biome. A detailed modern recircumscription places it as a common element of the Brazilian Caatinga on sandy and stony soils, with additional populations in dry forests and on steep rocky slopes in Venezuela and Colombia.

The plant is a shrub or small tree with an almost fastigiate habit, usually about 1.0 to 4.0 m tall and sometimes reaching 5.0 m. It has many slender, fragile, greyish, striate stems, with older stems becoming glabrous and younger growth showing multicellular non-glandular hairs. The leaves are solitary or paired, ovate, membranous, slightly discolorous, and usually about 2.5 to 6.5 cm long by 7 mm to 4.2 cm wide, with a light green upper surface and a paler underside. Petioles are pubescent and usually about 5 mm to 2.5 cm long.

Its flowers are produced in small fascicles of 3 to 6 on pendent, straight, non-geniculate pedicels about 1 to 2 cm long. The buds are ovoid, violet at the apex and cream near the base. The calyx is green and pubescent, usually with 5 conspicuous teeth and only occasionally up to 7. The corolla is stellate, about 4.5 to 7.5 mm long and 1.0 to 2.0 cm across, whitish green on the outside and purple on the inner lobes and part of the limb, with a cream to yellowish-white tube. This combination of small multi-flowered fascicles, straight pendent pedicels, toothed calyx, and purple-marked corolla is central to the species' identity.

The fruit are small, globose berries that are slightly flattened, about 8.5 to 9.5 mm across, hanging on curved pendent fruiting pedicels. Modern field-based treatment records them as dark green when immature and yellowish-green at maturity, with blackish-brown seeds rather than pale seeds. Capsicum parvifolium has also been recorded in north-eastern Brazil under vernacular names including pimentinha, pimenteira, alecrim-quebrado, jiriquiti, and pimentinha-brava, and an ethnobotanical survey from the region recorded the leaves being used as a poultice with butter or olive oil against furunculous lesions. A major published conflict exists over ripe fruit and seed colour, because earlier literature described red or orange mature fruit and pale seeds, while the recircumscribed modern treatment established yellowish-green mature fruit and blackish-brown seeds as the defining state for the species.