Flower of the Day – Filius Blue Pepper

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about my backyard milpa (Mexican farming plot; click here for full story).  One of the varieties that I mentioned was a cute compact pepper, the Filius Blue; this is how one of them looked then:

They have grown and now are blooming (same plant, photo below, and a close-up of a flower at the top of the post):

 

The plant next to it has already developed a couple of peppers, crowned like a prince with royal blue/purple, pill-size fruit:

According to PepperScale.com, Filius Blue can be up to twenty times hotter than jalapeño peppers, ranging from 30 000 to 50 000 in Scoville heat units, which would provide about the same sting as cayenne pepper.  Amongst the characteristics of this Mexican-native pepper, there are two that go against the coherent order of development in most peppers: first, Filius Blue peppers are never green in colour, starting from bluish purple like the ones pictured above, then changing to orange and, finally, red; the second is that their hotness level starts at its highest, and mellows slightly as it matures.

Right now I am enjoying looking at the pretty purple flowers and unique royal blue/purple peppers on the plant, but I have started imagining the peppers tucked, like little gems, in some tasty Mexican creations (more on that once I hopefully get a nice amount of peppers …)

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Linking to Cee’s Flower of the Day (FOTD) for July 22, 2019.