Sweet Pepper, California Wonder

Sweet and hot peppers are indigenous to Central and South America. They have been cultivated since prehistoric times. Archaeologists have found chili peppers at sites dating to 7000 BC. The Aztecs, Incans and Mayans all cultivated peppers. The Aztecs had at least seven different words for hot peppers. We derive the term chili pepper from some of the Aztec words for hot pepper. The Incas used peppers as a form of currency. Columbus named the peppers he saw growing in the West Indies, pimiento, because he thought they were the pimienta, spice pepper, grown in the East Indies. He was painfully surprised to find out that the West Indian peppers were incredibly hot. On his several voyages to the New World, Columbus collected many varieties of hot and sweet pepper and brought them back to Spain. The peppers immediately gained popularity and spread to Africa, India and the Far East before they became popular in the rest of Europe and North America. In Central and South America, peppers are perennial plants, which can grow four to six feet in height, but in North America, peppers are grown as annuals because they are very sensitive to frost.