If you’re a keen chilli-grower and just happen to have a couple of pet budgies around the house, then you’re very much in luck! It’s been proven that our feathered friends are in fact super effective at helping our favourite chilli varieties survive and thrive. How? Overt your eyes kids because it’s about to get graphic… bird chillies
Unfortunately, chilli seeds are often born into a world with danger around every corner. Animals such as ants are eager to devour them while pathogens are keen to infect them. Further rubbing salt into the wounds, some species of birds swallow seeds whole and then “deposit” them miles from where they originated. But for some chilli plants, this is precisely what they would have wanted to happen.
Attracted to the fleshy fruits that encase seeds, birds consume them and then disperse the gut-processed seeds to new environments. In a study conducted around the topic, this process was shown to have hugely positive effects for the freshly pooped out seeds. Seed survival (when compared to those which had not passed through a bird’s system) increased by 370%! This remarkable figure is thought to be because of the 100-fold reduction in volatile odours omitted by the seeds that usually attract seed-eating ants. On top of this, processed seeds are significantly less infected by fungal pathogens.
Bird’s eye chillies are so called because looking at one from the stem end can resemble the eye of a bird. Try it out! However some believe that this variety of Capsicum Annuum is so called because of the way they’re spread in the wild…you know…THAT way…
The African bird’s eye chilli is known as piri piri. Anyone else hungry for chicken all of a sudden?
We know just how crucial food is to society and in most cultures, chilli is king! This is so true in fact that chillies are THE most commonly consumed food, by quantity, in the world! Beaten only by salt, but I pose the question, is salt really a food?… Regardless, the international pull of these beautiful little plants is undeniable.
Chillies contain more vitamin C than Oranges! The average green chilli can contain up to 5 times what an orange can produce. Oranges also tend to pale in comparison when it comes to Vitamin A, Vitamin B-6, Magnesium, Iron and Potassium.
Of course not! I wouldn’t be talking about a big man…boring! Chillies are much more fascinating! The varieties of shape, colour and size of chilli that exist on this planet are truly vast. After all they’ve probably been here almost as long as we have! But with new specimens being created almost all of the time, the new hottest, funkiest or flat out biggest variety of chilli is only ever just around the corner.
Let me introduce you to the Big Jim! These remarkable plants, originated in New Mexico, USA, are capable of producing some of the biggest chilli pods in the world. But that’s not all of what is so remarkable about this gargantuan shrub. It’s the strange scale of the pods compared to its own stem that makes the Big Jim such a popular chilli plant in the Southern States of America. Usually, the plant itself is only 2-3ft tall but the pods can grow up to anything around 1ft, almost half the size of the whole plant and 5 times as wide. That would be like a human giving birth to a chest of draws…sorry.
The average ‘Big Jim’ fruit comes in at 30.48 cm long. Compared to our old friend the bird’s eye chilli at 3-4 cm, it’s almost 10 times the size! In terms of heat however, the smaller chilli wins. The Scoville Heat Units (SHU) that a bird’s eye chilli produces is 100,000 – 225,000. This compared to Big Jim’s measly 500 to 2,500 SHU. The Big Jim is perfect however for making decorative “ristras” as well as the classic (and very tasty) chile rellenos dish.
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