Chili Peppers in the Herb Garden.....you know, they're beautiful!...but deadly or at least cruelly painful

The red one is Pepperoncini, the orange one, appropriately, NuMex Halloween. I don't know anything about either one but I like them!

I do know that we have had a pepper, the Naga Jolokia from Northeastern India, reputed to be the hottest in the world, in pieces on a paper towel on the table in the headhouse for the past two days. No one will touch it, or should. It's so hot that Tony wasn't able to cut a piece small enough to handle.....Tony likes 'em real hot. George couldn't eat it either, though he plans to make a hot sauce using it. I don't know. Tony claims his hand stung for over a day just from touching it. You have to be careful where you put your hands when you've handled peppers this powerful.

George did explain Scoville units to me though, the scale for measuring "heat" in peppers. Apparently the Scoville measure is the minimum dilution that can be done on a pepper at which it still evinces heat. In other words a Scoville rating of 1,000 would mean that that particular pepper can be diluted 1,000 to 1 and the heat is still detectable. The Naga Jolokia has a Scoville rating over one million. Wow.