Shrubs or annual or perennial herbs; pubescence of simple hairs. Stems branched. Leaves solitary or paired, petiolate; leaf blade simple, entire or sinuate. Inflorescences solitary or few-flowered clusters at branch forks or leaf axils; peduncle absent. Flowers nodding or erect, actinomorphic. Pedicel erect or nodding. Calyx broadly campanulate to cup-shaped, denticulate, sometimes slightly enlarged. Corolla white, blue, or violet, campanulate or rotate, divided halfway or more. Stamens inserted near distal end of corolla tube; filaments slender; anthers yellow or purplish, ovoid, dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary 2- (or 3)- locular; ovules numerous. Style slender; stigma small, capitate. Fruit a moist berry, sometimes large, erect, nodding, or reflexed. Seeds yellowish, discoid; embryo coiled, subperipheral.

Source: [
• 8
]. 

CAPSICUM L.

Hierbas o arbustos, generalmente ramificados, a veces postrados, inermes, pubescencia de tricomas simples. Hojas solitarias o en pares, simples, mayormente ovadas o elípticas, enteras; pecioladas. Flores solitarias (raramente en pares) en las axilas de las hojas o en las dicotomías de las ramas 5-meras, actinomorfas, los pedicelos con una curvatura conspicua en la inserción del cáliz; cáliz cupuliforme, truncado, frecuentemente con dientes o umbones emergentes en los lados; corola campanulada, parcialmente lobada; filamentos insertos cerca de la base del tubo, anteras oblongas, frecuentemente azuladas, dehiscencia longitudinal; ovario 2-locular pero a veces con placentas múltiples. Fruto una baya carnosa, jugosa o seca, hueca en el centro, frecuentemente picante; semillas numerosas, discoides, 3.5–5 mm de diámetro, amarillas, cremas o negras, con el embrión enrollado.

Género con ca 20 especies, mayormente de Sudamérica; 2 especies nativas o naturalizadas en Nicaragua, una de las cuales es una maleza. Además de los caracteres indicados en la clave, Capsicum se distingue de otras Solanaceae por tener una capa de células gigantescas dentro del ovario, la cual es visible con lupa de mano en un corte manual del fruto. Revised Oct 2013, AP.

W.G. D'Arcy and W. H. Eshbaugh. 1975. New World peppers [Capsicum--Solanaceae] north of Colombia: A resumé. Baileya 19:94--105; C.B. Heiser and B. Pickersgill. 1975. Names for the bird peppers [Capsicum--Solanaceae]. Baileya 19: 151--156.

Source: [
• 9
]. 

Erect or clambering short-lived perennial herbs; stems sometimes angled, glabrous or pubescent with simple, sometimes glandular hairs. Leaves simple, entire or weakly toothed, mostly ovate or elliptical; abruptly or gradually narrowed into a slightly winged petiole; minor leaves present or not. Inflorescence one or a few flowers fascicled in the leaf axil; the flowering pedicels mostly downward curved, erect or curved in fruit, sometimes angled. Flowers with the calyx cyathiform or short tubular, truncate or with 5 or 10 short teeth, sometimes accrescent but not enclosing the fruit, rarely with an annular thickening or ferrule around the base; the corolla small, yellow, white or bluish, sometimes spotted, deeply lobed; the stamens 5, equal, the filaments inserted at the base of the corolla tube, the anthers yellow or purple, dehiscing longitudinally; the ovary glabrous, 2-loculed, many-ovuled, the stigma puntiform or capitate. Fruit a dry, coriaceous to fleshy berry with large air spaces in the locules, bright purple, red, orange, yellow or white, comestible. Seeds flattened-lenticular, yellow (Panama), small; embryo curved around the periphery of the seed; the endosperm fleshy.

Source: [
• 11
• 10
]. 

Annual or short-lived perennial herbs, rarely shrubby, often ± divaricately branched, unarmed, glabrous or pubescent with simple eglandular or glandular hairs.

Source: [
• 7
]. 

Fruit a berry, extremely variable in size and shape, seated on a flat or cupular calyx and greatly exceeding it, juiceless or somewhat juicy, incompletely 2–3(or rarely 1)-locular, sometimes with large air spaces in the locules, usually acrid.

Source: [
• 7
]. 

Calyx short, broadly campanulate to shortly tubular, 5(7)-ribbed, truncate, entire or 5(7)- or 10-dentate; teeth short, setaceous, often splitting at the sutures; in fruit usually slightly enlarged.

Source: [
• 7
]. 

Seeds numerous, small, flat, compressed, suborbicular or ± reniform, with thickened margin; testa reticulate-rugose or almost smooth; embryo strongly curved or circinnate, subperipheral in the abundant, fleshy endosperm; radicle terete, as wide as the semi-terete cotyledons.

Source: [
• 7
]. 

Corolla purple to bluish, yellowish, white or greenish, sometimes spotted, rotate to widely campanulate; tube short; limb plicate, deeply 5(7)-lobed, the lobes never overlapping in bud, with induplicate-valvate or valvate aestivation.

Source: [
• 7
]. 

Leaves alternate, often 2 or 3 appearing together, mainly towards the ends of branches, abruptly or gradually tapering into a slightly winged petiole, mostly entire, to weakly dentate; minor leaves sometimes present.

Source: [
• 7
]. 

Flowers 1–few, extra-axillary, leaf-opposed or appearing axillary, actinomorphic.

Source: [
• 7
]. 

Stamens 5(7), variously inserted in the corolla tube, ± exserted; anthers oblong or cordate, connivent or free, basifixed, the ± parallel thecae dehiscing by longitudinal slits.

Source: [
• 7
]. 

Ovary 2(4)-locular; ovules hemicampylotropous, numerous in each locule, on a placenta adnate to the dissepiment or arising from the central angle of 2 dissepiments at the base; style filiform; stigma capitate or slightly dilated, obsoletely 3-lobed or difformed.

Source: [
• 7
]. 

Disk inconspicuous or none.

Source: [
• 7
]. 

herbs

Source: [
• 10
• 11
].