Chile pequin and chiltepin name the same botanical variety, Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum. Growers separate them by pod shape rather than by genetics: tepins ripen round, pequins ripen as small pointed bullets. WikiPepper rates most of both between 30,000 and 100,000 SHU, which puts nearly all of them at 6 on the 0 to 9 Perceived Heat Scale behind every Universal Pepper Number.
What separates a tepin from a pequin?
Pod shape, and nothing deeper. Paul Bosland drew the line in the 1992 release paper for NuMex Bailey Piquin, citing Laborde and Pozo: the piquin fruit is oblong, the tepin fruit is round. Both grow wild from Arizona and Texas south to the Andes, and both carry the same varietal name. Regional usage multiplies from there. Chiltepin, chiltepe, chiltecpin, petin and bird pepper all attach to populations a botanist files under one taxon. The Chile Pepper Almanac counts nineteen spellings of pequin in circulation.
The varieties, side by side
SHU ranges and codes below come straight from the WikiPepper database. A code reads species, ripe color, pattern and skin, pod form, heat digit, serial. The heat digit follows the top of the SHU range, so 40,000 to 60,000 gives a 6.
| Variety | Pod form | Ripe color | SHU range | UPN | Note |
| Chiltepin | Round | Red | 50,000 to 100,000 | A-R-SM-T-6-025 | The wild type, from Sonora to south Texas. |
| Dwarf Tepin | Round | Red | 50,000 to 100,000 | A-R-SM-T-6-016 | Same heat on a smaller frame. |
| Pequín | Small bullet | Red | 40,000 to 60,000 | A-R-SM-P-6-025 | The reference pequin, pointed rather than round. |
| Texas Pequín | Small bullet | Red | 30,000 to 60,000 | A-R-SM-P-6-032 | Fencerow pepper of south and central Texas. |
| Yellow Piquín | Small bullet | Yellow | 40,000 to 70,000 | A-Y-SM-P-6-004 | Color selection, top of the pequin heat range. |
| Variegated Chile Pequín | Small bullet | Multicolor | 30,000 to 60,000 | A-M-STVA-P-6-001 | Striped and variegated pods, grown as ornamental. |
| NuMex Bailey Piquín | Long, tapered | Red | 100,000 to 140,000 | A-R-SM-L-7-001 | NMSU release, the only heat 7 in the group. |
| Chilpaya Tuxtlas | Standard tapered | Red | 5,000 to 30,000 | A-R-SM-J-5-102 | Veracruz type, far milder than the rest. |
Plant height belongs in no such table. A wild chiltepin in a Sonoran canyon reaches shrub size over years under a nurse plant; the same seed in a five gallon pot behaves like an annual. Height tracks age, root room and frost, not cultivar.
The one bred for a harvester
New Mexico State University released NuMex Bailey Piquin in 1992, the first machine-harvestable piquin. Bosland and Iglesias ran a pedigree selection over three greenhouse generations from an open-pollinated accession collected in the Caribbean region of Mexico. They selected for upright semi-determinate growth, concentrated fruit set, and pods that drop free of the calyx at maturity. HPLC put the dried fruit powder at 97,000 Scoville units. Three years of plots at Las Cruces averaged 4,490 dry kg per hectare, 84 percent of it red at harvest. The cultivar honors Alton L. Bailey, the university's Extension vegetable specialist emeritus. WikiPepper lists it at 100,000 to 140,000 SHU, higher than the release paper's single figure, which moves it into the very hot band.
How hot is a chile pequin really?
Hot, and briefly so. Published ranges cluster between 30,000 and 100,000 SHU, well above a jalapeño and below a habanero. The more useful fact is duration. Mexican collectors call the chiltepin burn arrebatado, snatched away: it peaks hard and clears in a few minutes, where a chinense burn settles in. Two pods off one bush can still differ by a wide margin, because wild populations were never bred for uniformity and capsaicinoid content answers to drought, sun and harvest date.
Where these plants actually grow
The chiltepin is the only wild chile native to the United States, and Texas made it the official state native pepper in 1997 by House Concurrent Resolution 82. Wild stands sit in the understory of desert washes and canyons, sheltered by mesquite and hackberry. Birds eat the pods, ignore the capsaicin, and plant the seed. In 1999 the Coronado National Forest set aside roughly 2,500 acres around Rock Corral Canyon in the Tumacacori Mountains as the Wild Chile Botanical Area. It was the first United States reserve created for a crop wild relative.
Do pequin seeds need special treatment?
Usually, yes. Wild glabriusculum seed carries real dormancy and takes 14 to 45 days to break, against 7 to 14 for a domesticated annuum. The Chile Pepper Almanac calls for bottom heat at 85 to 90°F, a 24 hour soak, light scarification, and gibberellic acid near 400 mg/L. Potassium nitrate at 0.2 percent helps some lots. Fresh seed matters more than any of it. For the wider naming problem behind these plants, see wild tepin and pequin variants, and for field practice, the wild pepper growing guide.
Sources & Further Reading
- Bosland, P.W., and J. Iglesias. 'NuMex Bailey Piquin' Chile Pepper. HortScience 27(8):941-942, 1992.
- Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine. Texas' Native Pepper Is a Tiny Terror.
- USDA Forest Service. Chiltepine or Bird Pepper (Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum).
- USDA Agricultural Research Service. GRIN-Global accession search, for Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum collections.
- Priest, C.T., and D.J. Austin. The Chile Pepper Almanac. Harambe Publishing, 2026. Amazon