A Botanical Portrait Of Peppers: Flowers, Fruit And Form

Which Names Belong To A Pepper’s Botanical Identity?

Kew records Capsicum annuum as an accepted species in the Solanaceae family. Its morphological descriptions include white flowers and identify the fruit botanically as a berry.

The NMSU Chile Pepper Institute introduces annuum, chinense, frutescens, baccatum and pubescens as five cultivated Capsicum species. The species names provide a starting point for following relationships among peppers encountered in the kitchen.

The name Capsicum annuum that we use today appears in the first volume of Carl Linnaeus’s Species Plantarum, published in 1753, on pages 188–189.

• The Chili Pepper’s Journey: From American Traces To European Pages

Which Details Can Be Seen In Flowers And Fruit?

Kew’s records describe variation in fruit form, size and colour, from narrow elongated forms to rounded or lobed fruits. That variety offers a rich subject for a botanical drawing.

A close-up can distinguish the fruit’s connection to its stem, the green structure around the flower and the line of the fruit wall. Placing an exterior view beside a section brings the structure beneath the surface into the portrait.

• a tissue map of pepper pungency

What Can A Pepper Drawing Tell Us In A Collection?

A botanical drawing shows which details of a plant have received attention; its collection record carries the identity of the image. Read together, they open an enquiry extending from a pepper’s form to paper, brushwork and writing.

The Rijksmuseum dates its drawing Peperplant (Capsicum annuum) to 1596–1610 and lists Anselmus Boëtius de Boodt and Elias Verhulst in its maker fields. The work on paper combines watercolour, opaque paint, black chalk and writing. Its object number is RP-T-BR-2017-1-11-22.

These details offer a more precise encounter than calling it an old pepper picture. The date range preserves the openness of the record, while the two maker names keep its attribution visible. Reading the techniques together invites attention to the surface on which the image was made.

The Medium Of The Image And The Openness Of Its Record

Wellcome Collection records the pepper study numbered 22735i as a watercolour. Its collection note places it in an album of Japanese watercolours of herbs and vegetables. The visible record supplies neither a maker’s name nor a date of creation.

That openness is part of reading the work. Its recorded name, medium and album setting give us a route back to the object without filling the undated field with an imagined century. The catalogue becomes a second way of attending to the image.

Kew explains that its illustration collection serves researchers as a reference resource alongside herbarium specimens. Its account of botanical illustration history also discusses the role of sections, annotations and selected details in making knowledge. A drawing’s scientific value can be considered through its detail and associated records.

Applied to a pepper portrait, this suggests three questions: Which structure does the image bring forward? What name does the accompanying writing give it? Which details remain open in the record? These are our editorial questions for looking. They bring visual attention and documentary evidence together on the same page.

• From a drawing record to the page of a recipe archive

How Do Familiar Culinary Names Sit Together?

The NMSU Chile Pepper Institute places bell peppers, jalapeños and poblanos within C. annuum. It places habaneros and Scotch bonnets within C. chinense.

• From plant names to place names: the pepper atlas

Which Views Come Together In A Botanical Portrait?

A whole-plant view shows the arrangement of leaves and fruits. A flower close-up, an exterior fruit view and a section reveal different details. Looking up the pepper named on a hot-sauce label in a botanical record can open this portrait too: first ask how the plant is identified, then which details that record shows.

• Read Pepper Colour Through a Historical Colour Vocabulary