Chiltepin, a wild chili pepper, is a shrub with herbaceous stems turning woody from the bottom up with age, evergreen in frost-free regions. The bisexual flowers have five pointed, white petals, are self-fruitful, and bloom spring and summer.
The edible fruit are small berries, ovate, ripen from green to red, and contain many very small, disk-shaped seeds. The fruit have a relatively high amount of the chemical capsaicin, an irritant which produces a burning sensation in mammalian mucous membranes.
The leaves are green, lance-shaped, with glossy surfaces and smooth margins. The stems are many-branching. The leaves and stems are poisonous.
