Tepin, chiltepin, pequin and piquin name the same plant, not four different peppers. WikiPepper files them under Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum, the wild bird pepper standing behind every cultivated C. annuum. The database rates Chiltepin at 50,000 to 100,000 SHU and Pequín at 40,000 to 60,000.

The name Kew uses instead

Plants of the World Online treats var. glabriusculum as a synonym and accepts C. annuum var. aviculare for the wild form. This site, like nearly every seed vendor, still prints glabriusculum on the label. Both names point at the same peppers, so the disagreement will not ruin a grow. A genebank request or a herbarium sheet wants Kew's epithet. Our Kew species list walks through the rest of that synonymy.

What is the difference between a tepin and a pequin?

Shape and degree of cultivation, not botany. Tepins and chiltepins run round to slightly oval, roughly 3 to 5 mm across, and collectors gather most of them from wild stands. Pequins and piquins run elongated to pointed, 5 to 20 mm long, and gardeners across northern Mexico and south Texas have half-tamed them for generations. Texas Pequín sits at that boundary. The Chile Pepper Almanac draws the same line and adds that each valley and mountain range holds its own population. No herbarium sheet separates the two.

The regional names, and what each one means

Names travel, drift and get reapplied. The table keeps every entry the earlier version of this page carried, with corrections where a name turned out to belong to something else.

Name.What it refers to.Region.Status of the name.
Tepin.Tiny round red pod, fast violent heat.Southwest U.S., Sonora.Shortened form of chiltepin, standard in the U.S.
Chiltepín.The round wild pod itself.Sonora and across Mexico.From Nahuatl chiltecpin, "flea chile"; the original name.
Petin / Petín.Round wild pod.Guatemala.Regional pronunciation of tepin.
Piquín / Pequin.Elongated small pod, often garden-grown.Mexico and Texas.Spanish "small"; pequin is the anglicized spelling.
Chile Mosquito.Very small round wild pod.Mexico, used loosely.Size nickname, not a distinct population.
Chile del Monte.Any wild chile gathered off the hill.Mexico, Yucatán to Sonora.Generic; "de monte" and "del monte" are the same phrase.
Chile Silvestre.Wild chile, generic.Mexico and Central America.Descriptive, covers several species.
Bird Pepper.Any small bird-dispersed chile.English-speaking areas.Not botanical; covers glabriusculum and frutescens types.
Wild Bird Eye.Small wild chile, English usage.Generic.Growers confuse it with African Bird's Eye, a C. frutescens.
Colombian Tepin.Wild annuum from the northern Andes.Colombia.Trade name; the local name is Ají Chirere.
Piquín Blanco.Pale or cream-fruited pequin.Mexico.Seed-trade name, no published population study.
Chile Tepiquin.Tiny round hot pod.Northern Mexico.Blend of tepin and piquín; local usage, weakly documented.
Chilpaya.Round hot chile with a green, herbal note.Veracruz, Los Tuxtlas.Local name; the Almanac's own chart misfiles it in Bolivia.
Chawa.Small pungent chile of Yucatecan cooking.Yucatán.Yucatec Maya name; our entry sits at 2,000 to 10,000 SHU.
Maax / Ma'ax ik.Round red wild chile.Yucatán.Yucatec Maya, roughly "monkey chile"; long ritual use.
Chile Tun.Reported as a very small, very pungent pod.Yucatán.Disputed: no botanical or ethnobotanical source confirms it.
Chile Cobán.Small chile, smoke-dried over wood.Alta Verapaz, Guatemala.Place name; the smoke, not the plant, defines it.
Chile Ixbut.Listed earlier as a ceremonial hot pepper.Highland Guatemala.Wrong: ixbut is Euphorbia lancifolia, a Maya nursing tea.
Chile Cascabel Silvestre.Wild round pod whose seeds rattle when dry.Mexico, varies.Do not confuse with Cascabel, a dried domesticated annuum.
Chiltepe.Round to oval wild pod.Guatemalan highlands.Standard Guatemalan name for the same wild plant.
Timpinchile.Small round coastal wild pod.Veracruz.Local name recorded in the Almanac's regional chart.
Ky'ỹi.Small round wild pod.Paraguay.Guaraní name, indigenous cultivation.
Ulupica.Round wild pod, several colors.Bolivian Andes.Not glabriusculum: these are C. eximium and C. cardenasii.

Heat and flavor

Our entries for the round wild types cluster at 50,000 to 100,000 SHU, which puts them alongside the very hot group rather than the superhots. Elongated pequins read lower, near 40,000 to 60,000. Field tables in the Almanac go wider, to 200,000 for Sonoran collections, and nobody has run those populations through an accredited lab. Treat the high figures as reports, not measurements.

The eating experience separates these peppers from cultivated chiles more than the number does. Heat arrives at once, peaks in seconds and clears in three to five minutes. Mexican cooks call that quality arrebatado. Pequins burn a little slower and hang on longer. Cooks use both dried and crushed at the table, in salsas, and in vinegar. Coban gets smoked like a chipotle, which changes the flavor far more than the variety does.

Why do wild pequin seeds take so long to germinate?

Because the seeds carry real dormancy, and the research says so. Alcalá-Rico and colleagues ran eleven pre-germination treatments across 10 piquin genotypes from different parts of Mexico. Gibberellic acid, alone or after mechanical scarification, gave the highest germination percentage and speed and the fewest hard seeds. A separate trial on five wild populations in Sinaloa and Sonora soaked seed at 0, 125, 250 and 500 ppm GA3 and raised germination in every population, with the higher doses working best.

Two practical points follow. Untreated wild seed germinates erratically, sometimes at single digits, and the variation runs by population as much as by technique. Soak at a few hundred mg/L for a day before sowing, hold the medium near 85°F, and expect two to six weeks. Our GA3 guide covers mixing and dosing.

Does passing through a bird improve germination?

Birds matter to these plants, though not the way growers usually claim. Avian TRPV1 receptors do not respond to capsaicin, so birds eat the pods and pass the seed intact, while rodents chew the seed and destroy it. Tewksbury and Nabhan documented that split in Nature in 2001. What no trial has shown is that a grower needs gut passage. Noss and Levey later found that passed seeds fared no worse than unpassed ones after dispersal. Smoke water and fermentation circulate as dormancy tricks on forums with no published trial behind them. GA3 has the evidence.

Growing them

These plants want the opposite of what a jalapeño wants. Lean, fast-draining mix. Filtered light under a taller plant, the way wild stands grow under mesquite and hackberry. Deep watering, then a real dry-down. Nitrogen pushes leaf and delays pods. In Zone 9 and warmer they persist as woody shrubs for years and fruit heavier in the second and third seasons, so overwinter them rather than restart. The wild pepper growing guide covers the full season.

Conservation

The chiltepin is the only Capsicum native to the United States, and the Forest Service protects a stand of it. The Wild Chile Botanical Area near Tumacacori in Arizona's Coronado National Forest dates to 1999 and shelters the largest wild chile population in the state. Native Seeds/SEARCH keeps the southwestern accessions. Elsewhere the pressure is habitat loss, cattle removing the nurse plants, and commercial harvesters stripping stands. Traditional collectors in Sonora take only ripe fruit, leave most of the plant, and rotate ground between years.

Sources & Further Reading