One of the oldest peppers cultivated by humans in the history of farming, research has shown the people of Peru and Bolivia have produced the Rocoto for thousands of years without the pepper moving in a large scale out of this region of South America.

I'll be honest, we have found this chilli pepper to be very unpredictable in terms of heat - but usually at the higher end! According to the internet it can have a heat rating of 50,000 Scoville units, which is the equivalent of a really spicy Cayenne pepper, but they can take you by surprise at 250,000 units as well. We usually drop a chilli in when we are cooking vegetables and just the presence of the chilli is enough to add heat to the vegetables. But then sometimes you'll have one that doesn't add much heat at all and I haven't been able to spot a pattern to determine how hot an individual chilli is going to be.

It's a relatively hardy chilli plant - I have it thriving on a hillside where it's partially sheltered by a copper beech tree - but doesn't even look like it is worried about the cold although we are yet to have a frost. I would recommend that they are planted in spring as they will need the soil to be warm to germinate and the frost could damage them when they are seedlings.

Your friends will definitely ask questions about this plant! So pretty and not like any other chilli plant you'll see!

Auction is for 50 seeds - they grow really easily from seed so you shouldn't need more than that. But feel free to request more than 50 if you want and it should be no problem.

Have a great day :-)