permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

>> Is this just a standard safety sticker to cover the manufacturer against
>> someone stuffing a load into their mouths or are these plants genuinley NOT
>> edible?

Most ornamental peppers are pretty darn hot, up around 30,000-100,000
Scoville units, which is hotter than cayenne and in the range of chiltepin,
but not as hot as habanero at 300,000 Scoville. More importantly, a number
of ornamental peppers, such as Christmas cherry and Jerusalem cherry, are
related to wild solanums like nightshade, and thus have truly toxic
elements. So some are edible but hot, some are toxic, and as the confusion
over scientific names suggests, it's going to be hard to be sure which
variety is which.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com