About this variety
A Czech cayenne from the SEMO breeding house at Smrzice, and the one chilli in this group a British gardener can grow without a greenhouse. Slim pointed pods about 8cm long ripen from green to a deep golden orange, and the plants crop heavily and evenly.
The heat is worth being straight about. Most sellers quote 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville units. Sea Spring Seeds, who send dried fruit from every crop to Warwick University for HPLC analysis, measured theirs at 27,000. So it is a hot chilli, well above a jalapeno, but it sits at the lower end of what the packets claim.
Thin walls make it a drying chilli above all. Strung up or ground into powder it is excellent, and used fresh it has less flesh to offer than a thicker-walled variety. The plants go top-heavy and flop under a full crop, so put a cane in early. They also resent drying out. Let the compost go dry and the plant checks, and you lose the crop you were building.