the.com/capsicum
The genus that gave peppers heat, then let bell peppers opt out entirely.
means The pepper genus — a plant family covering everything from sweet bell peppers to the fieriest chilies, defined botanically rather than by how much they burn.
from From Latin capsicum, likely rooted in capsa, 'box' or 'case,' nodding to the hollow, pod-like shape of the fruit — though some have linked it instead to Latin capsa in the sense of capsaicin's bite, the two ideas overlapping more by coincidence than design. The genus name was fixed in the 18th-century Linnaean system that sorted the world's plants into tidy Latin boxes, this one included.
- heat source
- capsaicin, which bell peppers mysteriously lack entirely
- botanical status
- technically a fruit, culinarily a vegetable, legally confusing
- color change
- green peppers are just unripe red ones
- evolutionary purpose
- heat evolved to deter mammals, not humans apparently