Chinese Five color

Chinese Five Color Pepper

If you’re looking for a colorful pepper plant, nailed it. Here you go!

Chinese Five Color is an heirloom Capsicum annuum from China. Technically, all chile peppers trace back to the New World, so it is more accurate to say this variety was developed and selected in China.

The fruit grow upright. The key characteristic of this pepper is how it undergoes radical color changes.  As a young little pepper, it is a deep purple. As the fruit ripens, they move through a gradient of cream, yellow, orange, and finally red. Since peppers are ripening at different times, you usually have several colors on the plant at once. Pretty!

Even Mrs. Ohio Peppers loves this one. She has grown several in her science classroom and claims it is the best-looking hot pepper plant. Hard to argue with her on this one.

Plant and Heat

The plants are bushy with shorter, wider branches. Leaves are dark green with some nice purple coloring through the stems and veins. It does very well in containers.

Heat wise, we estimate these around 30,000 SHU. That puts them somewhere in Cayenne territory and quite a bit hotter than your average Jalapeno.

Unlike some ornamental peppers, these actually taste pretty good. There is some sweetness to the fruit along with the heat.

Uses

Chinese Five Color works well fresh, pickled, or in salsa and hot sauce. What color pepper you get obviously depends on when you pick it.

They can also be dried and ground into pepper powder. Letting the fruit fully ripen red will give you a different flavor than picking them during the earlier purple or yellow stages.

Mostly though, this is just a really cool pepper plant that happens to be useful in the kitchen too.

Around 30,000 SHU. Estimated, of course. Growing conditions can change that quite a bit.

20+ seeds per pack