Know your Tabasco Pepper

The tabasco pepper is a variety of chili pepper species Capsicum frutescens.

It is best known through its use in Tabasco sauce, followed by peppered vinegar.

Like all C. frutescens cultivars, the tabasco plant has a typical bushy growth, which commercial cultivation makes stronger by trimming the plants.

The actual pepper is less than 5 cm (2") long.

The tapered fruits are initially pale yellowish-green and turn yellow and orange before ripening to bright red.

Unlike most chilis, tabasco fruits grow upwards, rather than hanging down from their stems.

Tabascos rate from 30,000 to 50,000 on the Scoville scale of heat levels, and are the only variety of chili pepper whose fruits are "juicy"; i.e., they are not dry on the inside.

A large part of the tabasco pepper stock fell victim to the tobacco mosaic virus in the 1960s; the first resistant variety (Greenleaf tabasco) was not cultivated until around 1970.

The word "tabasco" is the name of a Mexican state.