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Consider chile pequín (Capsicum annuum), also known as chiltepín. There’s no denying that it’s cute — cute enough, in fact, to have long ago become a backdoor herb.
Even Thomas Jefferson couldn’t resist this easily grown petite pepper with little red fruits brightening shady niches. He planted it in his Virginia garden as early as 1813.
Of course, there’s more to this small potato-family bush than beauty. That’s why it’s also called bird pepper. Its hot pea-sized fruits appeal to the palettes of mockingbirds and catbirds, among others. The sheer beauty and avian bounty of chile pequín are easy to observe. But, as with many other natives, there’s more than meets the eye when we see chiltepín. There’s also a considerable back-story. For that, though, we have to dig below the surface of what we see.
Chile pequín, it turns out, has a past not only as a garden herb but also as a culinary and medicinal plant, particularly among early Native Americans and Texan settlers. The Hopi, for instance, dried chiltepín fruits for winter fare, while the Navajo relied on the peppers to spice soups and stews. The Cherokee applied them to the soles of feverish patients.
But perhaps the least known historical fact about chile pequín is its ancestral place in a long line of domesticated peppers. “It is easy to forget,” Matt Warnock Turner points out, that this native of the Americas “is not just any pepper but the reputed progenitor of all domesticated peppers classified as Capsicum annuum, the most important and widely cultivated pepper species in the world today.”
Matt, who is a member of our Austin Chapter, makes this point in his new book Remarkable Plants of Texas: Uncommon Accounts of Our Common Natives (University of Texas Press, 2009). Matt insists, and proves, throughout this handsome 336-page book that there is indeed more than meets the eye to native plants.
He profiles 80 species, all lavishly illustrated. By pulling together information from various sources, old and new, Matt expertly tells the “inside story” of each species, including greenbrier (Smilax). Yes, even greenbrier, that notorious gotcha-or-blaspheme-vine loathed by hikers and gardeners alike.
In four pages Matt makes a convincing case for this clothes-ruining, skinripping misery of a plant. He recovers the early Native American culinary use of its starchy tubers and notes, too, the present-day consumption of them in South Carolina. He reports how greenbrier stolons were used in a sarsaparilla beer and also as a metabolism stimulant during the Civil War period.
Anyone could make a case for cute chile pequín, but only someone with considerable expertise would even think to make a case for greenbrier. Matt’s success in making us think differently about the more lowly native flora, such as greenbrier, is indicative of his overall achievement throughout Remarkable Plants.
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**ARCHIVED POST AUTHOR: scheick
