Capsicums (chillies and sweet peppers) are a vital part of many cuisines all over the world. They are the essence of spicy Mexican chilli salsa, Hungarian goulash, and most Asian curries. While native only to South America, capsicums are now one of the most widely cultivated crops worldwide.

Many English speakers call these plants peppers, but this can be confusing because black pepper is a different plant altogether. The confusion may have arisen when capsicums were first taken to Asia and began to replace black pepper as a spicy ingredient in food. The term capsicum may be used to refer to both the small spicy ones (usually called chillies), and the large, sweet, non-spicy ones (often called peppers).

Today, there are thousands of different varieties of capsicum including colourful ornamental ones, sweet salad peppers, and spicy blow-your-head-off chillies. Many botanists believe the origins of all these different types can be traced back to about five of the 30 or so species of Capsicum. These species can still be found growing wild in various locations in South America, with the highest species diversity in Brazil. Surprisingly, only five of these species have been domesticated. So the thousands of varieties we know today can be traced back to one of these five species.

People across the Americas have been eating and cultivating capsicums for 6000 years. Chillies and peppers were first domesticated in the Americas and they are one of the earliest farmed crops in South America. However, it is difficult to work out exactly when people started to farm capsicums. The main reason this is so difficult is because edible varieties grew successfully in the wild, meaning it is hard to know when people stopped gathering them from the wild and started to plant and cultivate them. Recently, fossilised grains of domesticated Capsicum species were found on grinding stones and cooking pots used in the Americas 4000 years ago, indicating that people were routinely farming them around 2000 BC.

Although capsicums were being grown and eaten thousands of years ago throughout South America, it is believed that capsicums were only exported after Christopher Columbus’ voyage in the 1400s. When Columbus tasted the small red berries of a chilli plant, he thought he had reached India and called them red pepper because the spice reminded him of black pepper. Columbus bought some chilli plants back to Europe and is often credited with introducing chillies to Europe, and subsequently to India, Africa, China, and Japan. Unlike eggplant, chillies were welcomed into the cuisines of Europe and within 100 years after Columbus’ voyage, capsicums had spread around the world and had become part of many national cuisines. Today, they are the defining ingredient in many traditional cuisines worldwide, including countries such as Italy, Spain, Hungary, Thailand, India, Vietnam and China. Capsicum is now one of the most widely cultivated plants in the world.

Capsaicin--the pungent, spicy compound in capsicums)--is used as a self defence spray and is also used by police across the world for riot and crowd control. The spray causes people to have trouble breathing and is very painful; the effect lasts about 20 minutes. Capsaicin has also been used to repel mice from gnawing on underground electrical cables and to keep squirrels from eating bird seed.