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Title: New Capsicum Cultivars: Lil’ Pumpkin, Pepper Jack, Midnight Creeper and Solar Eclipse

Author
item Stommel, John
item Griesbach, Robert

Submitted to: HortScience
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/28/2008
Publication Date: 7/1/2008
Citation: Stommel, J.R., Griesbach, R.J. 2008. New Capsicum Cultivars: Lil’ Pumpkin, Pepper Jack, Midnight Creeper and Solar Eclipse. HortScience.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: The USDA, ARS announces the release of four new pepper cultivars 05C37-3, 05C69-12, 06C84 and 07C114-1 (trademarked as Lil’ Pumpkin, Pepper Jack, Midnight Creeper, and Solar Eclipse, respectively). Once popular in the 1600’s, the use of vegetables as focal elements in the garden all but disappeared between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Today, aided by the availability of new and novel cultivars, vegetable gardening is again popular and gardeners and landscape architects have adopted novel vegetables as specimen plants, border plants, and in mass plantings to beautify the garden. Specialty vegetables are extremely profitable in comparison to their conventional counterparts. Lil’ Pumpkin’s unique black foliage and orange pumpkin-like fruit and Pepper Jack’s greenish black foliage and mix of orange and black conical fruit provide rich color contrasts in the summer garden. These two cultivars are particularly well-suited as ornamental vegetables for the fall Halloween season and are adapted to container and bedding plant production. Midnight Creeper’s prostrate spreading indeterminate growth habit, black foliage, and brightly colored erect fruit is attractive in mass plantings as a dense groundcover. Solar Eclipse’s tall upright indeterminate habit and black foliage provide a novel foundation for garden designs. Fruit are not a prominent feature of Solar Eclipse. Midnight Creeper and Solar Eclipse are intended for ornamental applications and are best used as bedding plants where maximum plant vigor is attained. Lil’ Pumpkin, Pepper Jack, Midnight Creeper and Solar Eclipse are clonally propagated selections. These new cultivars are available from McCorkle Nurseries, 4904 Luckey’s Bridge Road, Dearing, Georgia 30808. Plant patent applications have been submitted for these new cultivars.