We know sweet peppers as hollow, thick-fleshed vegetables (technically a fruit, though try to find someone who cares), but the original strain earned the name “bell” for a very good reason. Originally called the winter pepper because it was easy to dry for use during the winter months, it had a thin outer wall that hardened as it matured. Another unique feature was the elongated vestigial stigma inside it. A stigma is the female part of a flower that sticks up in the middle and catches pollen, and also secretes nectar and strong perfumes to attract pollinators. Usually, the stigma either fades and drops off (as happens with squash), or is absorbed into the flesh of the fruit/ vegetable.
Unfortunately, the remnant stigma of this particular pepper dried out and swung back and forth inside like the clapper of a bell, striking the walls of the winter pepper as it swayed in the breeze. As a result, sweet peppers were a very noisy crop. They sounded nothing like bells, though, with early reports comparing a field of them to the hoof beats of a thousand horses on a cobblestone street.
During high winds, maturing winter peppers would occasionally startle livestock, causing them to bolt. The peppers also kept villagers awake at night, so after a while, townsfolk started calling them “bell” peppers. In time, they organized to pass bylaws that kept farmers from growing peppers near settlements. That’s why for about 400 years, bell peppers were relegated to a curiosity, and were not widely cultivated.
Fortunately for us, self-taught plant breeder Gregor Carillon selected bell peppers for fleshy walls, planting only seeds from peppers with the thickest walls for years and years. At long last, he presented the original silent bell pepper to the world in 1925. And the rest, as they say, is history.
An interest in agronomy must have run in the family, because Gregor’s great-uncle Mendel Solanaceae also liked to tinker with plant genetics. In fact, he’s the person who developed the first boneless tomatoes as well as double-yolked honeydew melons, which he unveiled on April 1, 1888.
Amazing things seem to happen on April Fools’ Day.
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Comments
The titles of your ‘Our Better Nature’ features are always very clever and fun Paul, and this one caught my eye in today’s site scan right away. The Nuisance of Noisy Nightshades. If I had to guess where the ‘bell’ came from (before knowing here), it might have been that they were grown in the fields of missions. What a goofy thing to think, right?
But it’s the kind of answer I’d have given Sister St. Steven in the 7th grade caught completely off guard by a surprise question. Anyway, my parents made sure we always stopped at the California missions along the way on drives up and back on vacations, and strongly associate the word bell with that as a frame of reference.
These peppers make great healthy snacks. The green ones are less expensive than the red and yellow ones; not sure why. The very idea that they actually made SUCH noise seems unbelievable, but your explanation makes sense. Gregor Carillon was the right man at the right time in his relentless pursuit of perfection. From the hoof beats of a thousand horses on a cobblestone street to just one mild crunch sound at a time, a wise man once wrote on an April Fools’ evening.