Peppers growing inside of peppers…

Tiny baby green peppers! Awww so cute but I don't want to find them inside my pepper!
Tiny baby green peppers! Awww so cute but I don’t want to find them inside my pepper!

Lately, many peppers I have cut open contain tiny baby peppers growing inside of them! I just throw them away while cleaning out the seeds! Do people eat these little peppers? What are they? Are peppers safe if they have these parasitic twins inside?

Apparently, the scientific term is “internal proliferation.” The way it is formed is called “parthenocarpy” the formation of fruit without fertilization. Botanists have seen these abnormalities since 1891!

Image from "Bite-sized Biology" as this issue was discovered in the "Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club."
Image from “Bite-sized Biology” as this issue was discovered in the 1891 “Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club.”
I have seen green and yellow mini peppers inside of red, orange, yellow and green peppers! Even in jalapeños!
I have seen green and yellow mini peppers inside of red, orange, yellow and green peppers! Even in jalapeños!

As for its safety, nobody really knows! Some say they are perfectly safe to eat and others say they are alien babies placed in peppers to attack our brains…what??????
Plant breeders and USDA researchers consider this abnormal mini pepper undesirable, so I do, too. Throw them out! For now!

Ciao!