One of the interesting properties of chiltepin: as a distinct (sub)variety and pod type, it should – or at least, sounds like it should – be rather uniform. In fact, even true chitepines are somewhat diverse in their growth and other (pod) characteristics, and varieties that don’t really qualify as chiltepin sometimes also figure as such.
In this gallery of varieties of – purported – chltepines I’ve grown before, I deliberately sneaked in the Brazilian malagueta, which is really a C. frutescens and even looks rather Tabasco-like, and the, also Brazilian, charapita which looks a lot like a yellow chiltepin, albeit with ridges, but is actually a C. chinense. Some further accessions (i.e., seeds brought into seed banks – or otherwise available) also turned out to be something other than C. anuum var. glabriusculum, the true chiltepin. For some of the ‘varieties,’ especially those not out of germplasm banks, there’s also a good chance that they had crossed with other types of peppers…
