Pequin

The Pequin - or Chile Piquín - is a small, oval-shaped chilli native to northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, often growing wild as well as in cultivation. Despite its tiny size (rarely longer than 2 cm), it packs significant heat with a distinctive nutty, slightly citrusy, smoky flavour. Considered one of the genetic ancestors of many cultivated annuum varieties, it remains a household chilli across rural northern Mexico.

History & lineage

The Pequin sits at the boundary between wild and cultivated chillies - a semi-domesticated variety that grows wild across northern Mexico, southern Texas, and the broader Sonoran and Chihuahuan Desert regions, while also being cultivated in household gardens for centuries. Its small size, prolific seeding, and bird-dispersed habit have allowed it to colonise wild ranges and naturalise in many areas. The variety is closely related to - and often confused with - the Chiltepin, the truly wild ancestral chilli of northern Mexico and the southwestern US. The Pequin appears to be a semi-domesticated descendant of the Chiltepin, with slightly larger pods, oval rather than round shape, and somewhat more uniform plant habit. Some botanists treat them as varieties of the same underlying species; others as distinct cultivars. In rural Mexican usage, the names are often interchangeable. In northern Mexican cuisine, particularly in the states of Sonora, Chihuahua, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas, the Pequin holds a position roughly equivalent to that of black pepper in European cooking - the universal seasoning, dropped whole into virtually every pot or ground into table sauces. Many rural Mexican households grow Pequin in containers or backyards rather than buy them commercially, perpetuating a centuries-old cultivation tradition. The variety has cultural significance beyond cooking. Pequin and the wild Chiltepin are sometimes called "the mother of all chillies" in Mexican folk tradition, recognising their ancestral role in the broader chilli family. The Pequin appears in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cookbooks and tribute records, and has been continuously cultivated in northern Mexico for at least 5,000 years - making it one of the longest-cultivated chillies on Earth.

Its relationship to the wild chiltepin is the interesting part, and it is not settled. Chiltepin — Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum — is the most likely wild ancestor of nearly every domesticated annuum on earth, from the bell pepper to the jalapeño, and a 2022 genomic study traced the loss of pungency across that domestication directly. Pequin belongs to the same variety. Whether it is simply another name for chiltepin, a distinguishable form of it, or a semi-domesticated descendant of it depends on which authority you ask, and they genuinely disagree.

What is clear is that this is one of the very few chillies still gathered rather than farmed. Wild harvesters in Sonora — chiltepineros — can bring in as much as thirty tonnes in a season, and the wild-picked fruit has commanded prices around sixty-five US dollars a kilogram, which makes it one of the most valuable chillies in the world by weight. Texas named it the state's official native pepper in 1997. Mexican cooks have a word for the specific quality of its heat: arrebatado, meaning rapid or violent — fierce, immediate, and gone again quickly.

Culinary uses

Crushed between the fingers over whatever is already on the plate. This is a table chilli rather than a cooking one: dried pods sit in a dish and are crumbled into beans, pozole, soups and eggs at the moment of eating. Pickled in vinegar with oregano and onion, it is a standard jar in Sonoran kitchens. The heat arrives almost instantly and leaves almost as fast, which makes it far easier to use in quantity than the number suggests — and because the pods are tiny and dry hard, a jar of them keeps for years.

Growing it in the UK

Annuum is the forgiving group, and the right place to start. Seed germinates readily in warmth, the season is short enough to finish outdoors in a good summer, and February to early March is soon enough to sow. Germination is given as 14-28 days. 95 days to maturity is an ordinary season here — sow in February and it will ripen without a fight.

At 60–120 cm this is a substantial plant. Give it a 10-litre pot or a greenhouse border, and stake it before the fruit sets rather than after. Yield is moderate, so a single plant is a taste and two or three are a supply.

It is hot enough that gloves are sensible when you are preparing a batch, and that a seeded pod is a very different proposition from a whole one. Thin walls and a high drying score mean it dries well — thread the pods on a string somewhere warm and they will keep for a year.

Read from this variety's own record — the figures are in the panel opposite.