First time ever I grew a whole bunch of jalapeño plants from seeds I collected last year. They did very well this year. One of the bushes has a branch or two which produce very large oddly shaped thin walled jalapeños, while the rest of the bush produces normal looking jalapeños.
They are spicy and taste great. Just very interesting as this is the only bush that did this. Is this normal?
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I suspect that you (or a neighbor) grew another type of pepper last year and it crossed with your jalapeño.
I had a similar cross last year, but in that case the jalapeño crossed with one of those small “lunchbox” type peppers resulting in a slightly larger sweet pepper with a little kick to it. I planted seeds from it this spring and just picked a few of them today.
Three of the “mutants” and a jalapeño for reference.
Edited to add:
Ooop, I missed the part about both fruit picked from different branches of the same plant. I don’t think I have seen that before, though I earlier this summer I though I had the same thing going on with one of my pepper plants. After closer inspection I noticed that there were actually two plants growing in the same spot.
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From the look and your description (thin-walled) it sounds like it could’ve crossed with a poblano. Not sute about the selective branch production - some sort of weird mosaicism?
But if I’m reading the OP correctly, those two types come from different branches of the same pepper plant. First I’ve heard of a sport in peppers.
Possibly a stress induced thing when the blossom/fruit was forming? I know when or summer heat wave hit, the blossoms on many of my plants didn’t set fruit or formed incomplete or deformed fruits.
Yes, these are from the same Jalapeño bush. All the peppers look normal, just on Two branches off of that bush, every pepper on those two branches are this odd variety.
I’m also growing from seed Tabasco and sweet bell peppers (grocery store Fruit imports from Korea) in the same garden.
If cross pollination, Seems odd every fruit only 2 branches.
I should save some of the mutant seeds?
Cross pollinating doesn’t change this years fruits, only the seeds grown from that will be hybrids.
So I likely created a hybrid last year? Are these hybrids rare/valuable?
If it was a hybrid, the whole plant would have the same type of peppers. I think that part of the plant had a genetic mutation when it started. This is not uncommon in plants and is called a sport. Many fruit varieties started as sports of other varieties. Assuming the new ones are self-pollinated (you can use little mesh bags to ensure this), they will be genetically distinct from the other peppers and should come reasonably true to seed. If you like the way the peppers turned out, that’s all the justification you need to save seed. Worst case scenario is they don’t turn out the same next year but you still get peppers. Best case scenario, you have your own unique pepper variety.
Very interesting. I took a closer Look at the plants tonight, and what likely happened is there are two separate seedlings that got intertwined and look like one plant. I did have a few seedlings like this. So The mutation is actually an entirely separate planet.
If this is a unique plant, it’s quite a good one for our purposes. There’s more room inside when making stuffed jalapeño poppers, and it has the same taste as jalapeños.
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Well that’s a twist lol. Yea I bought a red chili pepper plant and it was two that sprouted from the same hole, I was able to separate them and now I have two mature plants. That mutation could just be the way the smaller plant expressed the stress from being overcrowded and shadowed by the bigger plant. Either way try saving some seeds from it and see what it does next year (or over the winter if you want to do some indoor gardening like myself).
Yes I’ll definitely get some seeds when they turn red.
Indoor gardening is a great thing for the winter.
I’m using standard screw in led bulbs with the diffuser dome removed, Setting them up in a bathroom vanity fixture. They aren’t designed or advertised as plant bulbs, but they work very well for it.