Chapter 65 Section 65 Classification of Peppers

After chili was introduced into China in the Ming Dynasty, the number of people who cultivated and ate chili grew rapidly. From the southwest and northwest of chili to the Central Plains, it became a hot pepper zone, and now it has expanded to the whole country. Everywhere there are people, there is a taste of chili.However, it is difficult to find chili peppers in China. I originally tried to find chili peppers in the Compendium of Materia Medica. Thinking that this work was written by Ming Dynasty scientist Li Shizhen, chili peppers were also introduced to China from the Ming Dynasty. Obviously, chili peppers were not included in the book. No.

There are some fragmentary descriptions of peppers in the ancient books of the Qing Dynasty. I have been hoping to find more comprehensive works on peppers. I found only a large number of introductions to peppers, including some books on pepper cultivation. I think this may be something Due to the division of Fang’s academic thinking, Oriental scholars would rather spend decades studying a period of human history, such as whether Lin Daiyu has small feet or big feet, rather than studying a single plant. The category of gardening is not what everyone does. To do it, we have to study "Historical Records", but what is there in fact?A plant world, which contains the laws of the universe.

There are two types of pepper taxonomy recorded by Linnai (1773), namely the herbaceous annual pepper and the woody pepper. The woody pepper has not been reported. The previous imagination of the woody pepper may appear in the virgin forest of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau , which requires scientific expedition workers to continue to work hard. During the cultivation of herbal peppers in China, there are about five varieties as follows. 1. Cherry pepper, medium-sized leaves, round, oval or oval, fruit as small as a cherry, round or oblate, red, yellow or slightly purple, very spicy, dried chili or for viewing, Such as button peppers and five-color peppers in Chengdu; 2. Cone peppers, short plants, conical or cylindrical fruits, mostly growing upwards, spicy, such as Cangping chicken heart peppers, etc.; 3. Cluster peppers, leaves Long and narrow, the fruit clusters, grows upwards, the fruit color is dark red, the flesh is thin, the spicy taste is very strong, and the oil content is high. It is mostly cultivated as dried chili peppers. It is late-maturing, heat-resistant, and has strong anti-virus capabilities, such as Guizhou Qixing pepper, etc.; 4. Long pepper Class, short to tall plant type, strong branching, small or medium leaves, generally drooping fruit, long-horned, pointed apex, slightly curved, like ox horns, sheep horns, linear.The flesh is thin or thick, with thin flesh and strong spicy flavor, for drying, pickling or making chili sauce, such as Shaanxi big horn pepper; for fresh food with thick flesh and moderate spicy taste, such as Changsha horn pepper, etc.; 5. Sweet bell pepper , weak branching, large leaves and fruits.According to the growth branch and fruiting habit of pepper, it can also be divided into unlimited growth type, limited growth type and partial limited growth type.

The growth and development of herbaceous peppers vary from place to place. It is an annual plant along the Yangtze River and all over North China, and dies every winter.In tropical and subtropical regions such as Hainan, Guangxi, Guangdong and the southern part of Yunnan, it can survive the winter in the open field, and new shoots can appear in the warm spring of the second year.In Sichuan, Guizhou, Jiangxi and other places, heat preservation measures are used to prevent freezing in winter, and old roots can also survive the winter.Peppers with old roots overwintering, because they bear fruit earlier than new seedlings, are a kind of pepper that can obtain economic benefits and are delicious before the greenhouse planting technology is popularized.