In my second year of growing peppers (2021), I planted some “Elysium Oxide Scotch Bonnet” seeds that I found online. The idea of a rust colored, slightly hotter than normal Scotch was right up my alley. The plants grew really well, and the fruit looked more or less like I was promised.
The heat though? The estimate was around 350k-600k SHUs. I believed it, tossed a few of them on a Pizza like I would with other ~500k peppers. They also didn't smell crazy hot like when you cut into a Ghost. Man, was I wrong. I did not finish that Pizza and it was the only time I got stomach cramps from the heat. I estimated it way over 1m SHU. And I have actually gotten comments of other who had the same result with ELO Scotches, a normal looking pepper that was several times as hot as we expected.
Still, I took the seeds from them, and this year, five years later, I planted them again, this time fully expecting a Super Hot.
I did NOT expect the peppers that grew. Right from when I started seeing fruit, they looked extremely bumpy, they were very purple, and as they grew, they got Reaper Tails. Nothing remotely close to what its parent looked like, or the one generation I was sold. And all of the plants look the same, so it's not an isolated mutation.
And to preemptively answer these two questions: No, they were not mislabeled, I didn't deseed any other peppers that day and labeled them right away. I always take the seeds out when I make Hot Pepper Pizza. And no, there definitely was no cross pollination with some kind of reaper on my part. For both questions, I have only grown Reaper-esque peppers in '23 and '24, when these seeds were sitting in the fridge in their marked Ziploc bag.
My only explanation is that there must have been some crossing in earlier generations, and that was the reason it was so far hotter than expected last time as well, and the next generation now has that gene becoming dominant.
Whatever the case, they look absolutely amazing. Maybe the gnarliest looking peppers I ever grew.
by SSJSaeda