I think that I don't know enough to offer an educated opinion.

I have seen abnormally shaped peppers before (which essentially looked like two jalapenos merged into one....a 'Siamese twin', so to speak) and have assumed the odd shape resulted from a fused blossom, aka a megabloom. However, I think fused blossoms are fairly rare in peppers, although they are much more common in tomatoes, and tomatoes and peppers are related to one another.

So, my best guess is that IF your oddly shaped peppers taste pretty much exactly the same as the jalapenos with a more standard shape, then it likely was a fused bloom. That's a guess made knowing nothing about your seeds or growing conditions/experiences, etc.

If you are growing from commercially-purchased seed and the oddly-shaped pepper has a different flavor, then you likely have a cross that occurred when the pepper seed was being produced last year, or prior to that. (Not all seed sold is necessarily terribly fresh nor can they give you a 100% guarantee it wasn't cross-pollinated while in production.)

If you are growing from seed you saved from a previous year or from saved seed received in a trade, you could have a cross and that would be one explanation, but not the only possible one. You could have seed saved from a hybrid plant that has reverted to its parentage and is throwing off-types of peppers. You could have seed saved from a hybrid or O-P plant that is not fully stabilized.

Your pepper shape is NOT from cross-pollination that has occurred this year in the garden. That kind of cross would give you normal peppers that look fine (i.e. normal) this year, but seed from them could give you odd shapes in the next plant generation and it could vary from one plant to the next.

Jay and George have lots of experience with peppers and seed saving and may have some other ideas.

Dawn

Probably not a cross, since the plant also produced normal Jalape�o type fruit. If it was a genetic thing, then one would expect all the peppers to be the same.

George
Tahlequah, OK

hmm... I haven't tasted them yet. The plant was a purchased plant from walmart. the look and smell very much like bell peppers. they don't smell hot, I'll let you know when I try it what it tastes like. Very interesting.

There are many, many named varieties of jalapenos and the Scoville Heat Unit levels vary a great deal, from the mild flavors of jalapenos like Jalapa, Senorita and Delicias to the hotter flavors of Mucho Naco, Grande', Jaloro and Mammoth to the flaming hot (for a jalapeno) Biker Billy.

You can't really 'trust' the flavor of hot peppers produced very early or very late in the pepper plants' growing season because they tend to be exposed to more stress in less-than-optimal conditions, and stress can cause the heat to vary a great deal from one pepper to another on the same plant.

If none of the peppers from that plant have heat and haven't had good heat at all this year, it is just a milder pepper. If some have heat and others don't, it likely is stress. It isn't a cross giving you both sweet and hot on the same plant if that is what you have because crosses don't work like that as George pointed out.

I'm betting it is stress-related--i.e. either less-than-optimal sunlight and temperatures or too much or too little moisture. As the temperatures have cooled here and the sunlight has been in short supply, my jalapeno peppers have gotten noticeably longer and more narrow than they were in July and August, but the heat level has been about the same so far. I haven't eaten from the most recently picked batch though.

Dawn

Kristin,

If you got them at Wal-Mart, they most likely were supplied by the wholesaler Bonnie Plants, and that could narrow down what type you might have.

The jalapenos carried by BP this year were:

Jalapeno (3" long, and no specific variety name given)
TAM Mild (2-3" long and jalapeno flavor without the heat)
Mucho Nacho (4" long and very wide, these are both longer and wider than standard Jalapeno and pack a lot of heat)
Mammoth (4" long and 1" wide and also very hot)

The sizes are for peppers that mature in ideal conditions. Your mileage may vary. The heat may vary too depending on stress levels (the longer a pepper stays on the plant and the more stress it is subjected to, the hotter it normally gets).

If your peppers have no heat, maybe you bought a Fresno Chili which bears a very strong resemblance to Jalapeno and which was sold by Bonnie Plants. (The labels could have been switched during the growing/distribution process.) I think Fresno is usually pretty hot though.

There are some crosses between hot and bell peppers, like Mexibell, that have characteristics of hot and sweet peppers combined but your peppers don't look like Mexibell.

We like a good mystery here, but not all mysteries are easy to solve.
Dawn