ONE of my very favourite fruits causes me hellish pain: burning mouth, throbbing head, pounding heart, running nose and popping, watering eyes. Not a pretty sight. But, oh boy, what a rush! And a rush that is soon followed by super-clear breathing, crystalline thinking and a general feeling of being on top of the world. Chilli peppers, the little demons! Everybody should grow them. Even if you never dare to eat them (and they are an acquired taste, so keep persevering), they make good-looking, eye-catching pot plants. At their peak, they bear starry flowers (usually white), and shiny fruits in different stages of ripeness in a collection of colours: cream, green, yellow, orange, purple and fire-engine red. The whole lot is nicely set off by pointed, ovate leaves growing handsomely in pairs.
Little can go wrong with these half-hardy exotics, and given a small amount of care, they grow into such perfect specimens that al l your friends will be congratulating you on your superior gardening skills.
Chillies (or chilies, or chiles - each is correct) belong to the genus Capsi- cum, and are members of Solanaceae, that richly historic family which includes potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco, deadly nightshade and the mandrake. There are a couple of dozen species of Capsicum, but most cultivated varieties stem from just five - although those you'll find in this country come from only three. C. annuum gives us cayenne, jalapeno and all sweet bell peppers; C. frutescens produces tabasco and Thai Dragon; and C. chinense - which is nothing at all to do with China, despite its name - is the parent of those fiercest of chillies: the Habanero and the Scotch Bonnet.
Actually C. chinense originated in Amazonian South America, but in 1776 the Dutch botanist Nicolaus Joseph von Jacquin got his wires crossed when he was naming the species and forever lumbered it with a misleading botanical tag. Such are the vagaries of plant taxonomy.
The hot stuff in chillies is called capsaicin, and is concentrated in the seeds and in the fleshy ribs, called the placenta, to which they are attached. As any committed chilli addict will tell you, it can be measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHU) - named after scientist Wilbur Scoville of the Parke Davis pharmaceutical company. In 1912 he invented the Scoville Organoleptic Test, a method for determining the strength of the peppers used in a patent muscle salve, Heet.
The mildest chillies, such as Anaheim (seed from Thompson & Morgan) have a rating of between 500 and 3,500 - although in our cool, cloudy climate they are likely to be at the lower end of the scale. And the fieriest one available here is Habanero (Thompson & Morgan) at around 325,000 SHU. That's hot. Although I am in training for the Habanero - it has a pungent, fruity flavour under the pain - more to my current taste are cayenne (Unwins and Mr Fothergill's Kitchen Garden) at about 40,000 SHU and jalapeno (Mr Fothergill's Kitchen Garden) at a mere 5,000 or so. And this year I'm trying a new variety from Unwins, Fruit and Spice, which promises to "ripen early with a fruity, mild, chilli flavour". It better be good, because at £2.49 for 10 seeds, it's one of the pricier peppers. Chillies do best in containers, indoors on a window sill or in the greenhouse, conservatory or porch. If you want to grow them outdoors, it must be in a sheltered, sunny spot, as on a tiny, south-facing patio or balcony garden. (Add a tomato plant or two, some herbs, some salad leaves and you'll have a very chic food patch.) Their chief enemies are aphids, red spider mite and whitefly. Aphids may be removed by hand (yuck! - use a tissue if you're squeamish) or hosed off; red spider mite are kept at bay by maintaining a moist atmosphere (by misting plants or damping down the greenhouse) and whitefly are deterred by the smell of French marigolds growing nearby, which they hate (can you blame them?).
Although chilli plants are perennials, they are grown in our climate as annuals, and are consigned to the compost heap at the end of the season. However, you can cheat the seed companies by overwintering them in the house: they will lose most of their leaves and look pretty ghastly. Resurrect them in spring when they begin to leaf up by repotting and giving them a good prune. The only problem then is what to do with the inevitable glut of hot little taste-bombs that begin to appear around mid-summer. I pickle mine with dill and enjoy them all year round with bread, cheese, omelettes, beans and beer - or just as taste-explosions on their own. They can also be frozen or dried, and look both professional-cookish and festive when strung with needle and thread on a "ristra", a long chilli necklace.
And just in case you wondered, the secret attraction of eating chillies lies in the endorphins - nature's little opiates that the brain speed-delivers to quell the burn. Along with the painkilling sensation comes euphoria, a natural high. Combine all these natural drugs zinging around your person with the heady, perfumed, aromatic taste of a good chilli, and you're not far from Utopia.
Diary dates:
Wednesday March 10th, 8 p.m: South County Dublin Horticultural Society Annual General Meeting, followed by illustrated lecture by David Hackett, The Trees of Trinity College. Royal Marine Hotel, Dun Laoghaire. Non-members: £2.
Thursday March 11th, 8 p.m: "Australian Plants - a Source of Inspiration for Irish Gardeners" by Dr David Robinson, in association with the Irish Garden Plant Society. Institution of Engineers of Ireland, 22 Clyde Road, Dublin 4.