Only time will bell

A capsicum bomb was dropped on Twitter last week, causing many to question everything they thought they knew about a particularly popular nightshade. Lifestyle blogger Call Me Amy tweeted that no matter what the hue – green, yellow, orange or red – bell peppers are all from the same plant.

“OK so I’ve just found out that green peppers turn yellow then orange then red and they’re actually all the same pepper just less ripe and my mind is blown,” Amy revealed to the tune of nearly 55,000 retweets and more than 250,000 likes.

Many expressed confusion, others smug bewilderment at how people could have gone through life without knowing this to be true. If you’ve ever grown peppers, perhaps you’ve witnessed them change from green to red as they ripen on the vine. But is Amy’s assertion accurate? Do all of the bell peppers in the produce aisle come from the same plant? Short answer: no.

“Although it *is* true that green peppers are just unripe regular ones, yellow, orange and red peppers are all genetically different at full maturity,” ethnobotanist James Wong clarified in a Twitter thread. “Their DNA predetermines the maximum amount of pigments they can produce, which creates this variation in colour.”

If left on the vine, some green peppers will change colour as they ripen; other varieties are fully ripe when green. So, whether or not the pepper will shade-shift depends on the plant. Different plants produce different coloured peppers, including the less common lavender, deep purple, white and brown.

Amy’s tweet brought on the resurgence of another food myth: bell peppers are sexually dimorphic. “That would mean the fruit could sexually reproduce with each other. They can’t,” explained Wong.