Determine Gender of a Bell Pepper from the Number of Bumps Underside: Facts

Story:

Flip the bell peppers over to check their gender. The ones with four bumps are female and those with three bumps are male. The female peppers are full of seeds, but sweeter and better for eating raw and the males are better for cooking. I didn’t know this!

Other Versions

How to Tell the Gender of a Bell Pepper.

Picture Suggesting Determine Gender of a Bell Pepper from the Number of Bumps Underside — Determine Gender of a Bell Pepper from the Number of Bumps Underside

1. There is a simple method for identifying the gender of a bell pepper. Look on the underside of the pepper, the ones with four bumps are female and those with three bumps are male. The female peppers contain more seeds, but are sweeter and better for eating raw. The males are better for cooking.

2. FYI: Male over female? Flip the peppers over to check their gender. The ones with four bumps are female. The ones with three bumps are male. The female peppers are full of seeds. You can save yourself some money by getting the males.

Analysis:

An image floating around the internet claims to describe how one can determine the sex gender of a Bell Pepper by the number of bumps on its bottom (underside). The accompanying stories say that the Bell peppers with four bumps/lobes are female and those with three are male. It is also said that the female peppers (with four lobes) contain more seeds, and are sweeter than the male ones. Although this myth of Bell Pepper gender has been around for years, it is not a fact.

Bell pepper, also known as Sweet pepper or Capsicum are the fruits of Capsicum annuum, they come (grow) from flowers possessing both male and female parts in the same flower (hermaphroditic). So Bell peppers are not classifiable as being wholly one sex or the other. If peppers with four lobes are really female and those with three are male, then what about some of those peppers with five lobes? The current claims are hoaxes, the different number of lobes on the bottom of peppers is because of their variety and size, not the sex. The sweetness of the peppers again cannot be determined from the number of lobes, it depends on the genetics and the environment in which the pepper is grown. A four-lobed pepper can have more seeds than a three-lobed one, but this has more to do with the overall size of the fruit, not gender. As for the picture, you can see it seems to have originated from the blog produceplanet.blogspot.com, which was later deleted, perhaps for obvious reasons.