This is one of those 'variegated' varieties that whilst not uniformly variegated, still have that lovely purple and white pigment all over the foliage. The flowers are a violet purple with white fades and the pods are mostly pendant(ish) shaped and could easily be confused with a Chinense pod. To the best of my knowledge there is no modern Chinense genes in this variety, and it is a true Annuum, but feel free to correct me if anyone knows otherwise.
The plant grows at a medium speed, so nothing remarkable in that respect. It actually lagged behind some of my other plants to begin with however I only germinated a single seed so we should take in to account any natural variation among the seeds that I purchased. The plant grows moderately low and quite bushy, rather than reaching for the stars like an S Club 7 smash hit.
The pods tend to bleach/colour in a vertical fashion above, similarly perhaps to the Fish pepper. They begin purple then briefly pass through green, in to orange and finally red. As with the last picture some pods undergo a very multicoloured phase akin to that of the unrelated Pink Tiger perhaps, which actually result in some fantastic eye-catchers. The plant itself is quite productive, with most of the flowers germinating early on and little in the way of bud drop. There's probably around 35-40 pods on the picture above at the time of the photograph, you'll notice too that it's in a chilli-grow planter. The pods themselves have a very average heat and a typical (read unremarkable) annuum flavour. This is not a criticism however as they're quite versatile and to date I've used them in most types of dishes. The only real problem I've had is that most of the pods were completely seedless!!! This may be a bad batch or some other infertility issue that has hit my chances of spreading the love as it were. However I have not read about this issue striking the species in general and I suspect that most other growers will not have this problem. Will definitely grow again.
Thanks.
