Adaptation

The hot peppers are an angiosperm, which means that they have vessels to transport water throughout the plant instead of tracheids like the gymnosperms. For an example of another angiosperm, click here!

Vessels are a much more efficient way to transport water than tracheids. Angiosperms are also deciduous, which means they lose all their leaves at once, or in the case of the hot pepper, die annually.

Being deciduous protects hot peppers against cold and snow. The ovary wall in a carpel protects the ovules (seeds) in an angiosperm. Think of an orange cut in half; every little triangular compartment you see in the orange is a carpel. While we're on the topic of oranges, why not check them out here! These triangular carpels become the fruit, or in the case of the hot pepper, the pepper itself. This also makes them resistant to drought and cold because the seeds are protected inside the fruit.

An interesting theory is that the hot peppers adapted the capsaicin because it didn't affect birds. This would mean that hot peppers evolved around what the birds were doing! The hot pepper is brightly colored, suggesting that it wanted to attract animals, but at the same time it has the awful spice to it, suggesting that it wanted to keep animals at bay. Birds are not affected by the capsaicin, so they are attracted by the brightly colored hot pepper, and not turned away by the intense spice it produces. There will be more on this subject later on in the Interactions, but don't get ahead of yourself! There is still plenty to learn about how hot peppers get all of the Nutrients they need to survive.