1. Ghost Chili/Bhut Jolokia

Scoville heat units (SHU): 800,000-1,000,000! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

The Ghost Chili Pepper (Bhut Jolokia) may look like a little wrinkled whoopee cushion, but this pepper is no joke. One of the hottest peppers in the world. This 2"-3" conical fruit ripens from green to orange to red, with a sweet, fruity flavor that you’ll be able to taste for about 30-45 seconds until the heat creeps in and lights your mouth on fire. 🥵

2. Devil's Tongue, Yellow

Scoville heat units (SHU): 300,000-500,000 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

The Yellow Devil’s Tongue pepper plants produce legions of 2"-3" tapered fruits that wrinkle and ripen from light green to bright yellow to golden yellow, and have a sweet, citrusy flavor. If you’re tempted to set your own tongue ablaze and have idle hands, push up some daisies and plant this pepper. Makes a scorching hot sauce or wicked pickles.

3. Pretty Purple

Scoville heat units (SHU): 200,000-350,000 🔥🔥🔥🔥

An edible ornamental, the Pretty Purple Pepper loves an audience. Compact plants produce an ensemble of 1"-2" tapered fruits that lift their tips in a glorious chorus line of mini rockets, going through several costume changes in green, purple, yellow, orange, and red. The show goes on when you bite into one. With a searing purple heat in tune with the Habaneros and the Scotch Bonnets, you’ll be singing and dancing in your own Broadway musical.

4. Scotch Bonnet, Yellow

Scoville heat units (SHU): 100,000-350,000 🔥🔥🔥

If you’ve ever wondered if the sun has a flavor, the Yellow Scotch Bonnet Pepper is your answer. This deeply lobed fruit that resembles the folds of a Scottish cap is sweet and fruity, and hot enough to break a wild horse. The generous plant produces 1"-2" fruits that ripen from green to yellow to yellower. This sunny little pepper is a key ingredient in Jamaican foods for unique flavor and scorching heat, and can easily ignite all of your recipes.

5. Scotch Bonnet, Red

Scoville heat units (SHU): 100,000-350,000 🔥🔥🔥🔥

The Red Scotch Bonnet Pepper is so named because its defined lobes resemble a Scotsman’s tam o’ shanter hat. Also called the Caribbean Red Pepper, the stout little fruit is sweeter and fruitier than its cousin, the Habanero, and hot enough to make a bird fly north for the winter. The plant puts out loads of 1"-2" green waxy fruits with thin skin that ripen through yellow, orange, and red. Its extreme heat and unique flavor is traditionally used in Caribbean hot sauce and jerk seasoning, but will be just as tasty and burn just as hot in any of your recipes.

6. Tepin

Scoville heat units (SHU): 50,000-100,000 🔥🔥🔥🔥

The Tepin Pepper is a tiny treat with a lot of heat. Compact, vigorous plants produce lots of juicy, pea-sized fruits that are hot enough to make a cookie crumble. This is a perennial bush in warmer locations, so if it survives the winter, it will grow back bigger and more productive. Use it to heat up anything from honey to menudo to ice cream.

7. Habanero, Chocolate

Scoville heat units (SHU): 400,00-600,000 🔥🔥🔥🔥

The Chocolate Habanero Pepper is a prolific plant that produces lots of 2" waxy nuggets that ripen from dark green to reddish brown. Twice as hot as other Habanero peppers, with a distinct flavor. First, a smoky earthiness drives up, then a fruity sweetness hops in the car, and soon you’re off at 600,000 SHUs, entering the on ramp to Ghost Pepper territory. Use it to spice up everything from margaritas to mango salsa to marinated brisket, and yes, even chocolate.

 8. Habanero, Red Caribbean

Scoville heat units (SHU): 400,00-600,000 🔥🔥🔥🔥

The sweet, citrusy flavor, tropical fragrance, and lush green foliage of the Red Caribbean Habanero will remind you of a beach vacation. And so will the searing heat! Produces loads of small 1"-2" wrinkled fruits that twinkle in colors ranging from key lime green to sunrise yellow to sunset orange to sunburn red. Use it to make some haba-haba salsa, broiled halibut with charred pepper cream sauce, or spicy pineapple ice cream.

 9. Habanero, Lemon

Scoville heat units (SHU): 200,000-300,000 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Yellow like the sun and hot as blazes describes the Lemon Habanero Pepper. If that scares you, there’s a Yellow Banana Pepper and a cup of milk waiting for you in the nursery. Everyone else can pull up a chair to the big kids’ table. This prolific plant produces lots of 2" wrinkled, waxy fruits that ripen from bright green to bright yellow to smoky golden yellow. The fruity fragrance draws you in, the citrusy flavor sits you down, and then 200,000-300,000 Scoville heat units (SHUs) of pure heat blaze across your tongue. Where’d you say that milk is again?

10. Habanero, Orange

Scoville heat units (SHU): 200,000-300,000 🔥🔥🔥🔥

The Orange Habanero Pepper is the kind of pepper that makes you want to check your garden several times a day to see how orange it can get. Very. The kind of pepper that makes you wonder if you can add it to a dish with all orange ingredients like chorizo, carrots, and sweet potatoes. Yes. Or how about with apricots and cantaloupe?

11. Habanero, White

Scoville heat units (SHU): 100,000-300,000 🔥🔥🔥🔥

The White Habanero Pepper produces lots of small 1"-2" fruits, all of them infused with smoky, sweet flavor and a heat like white lightning. These little thunderbolts start out green and ripen to a glossy pearl. Use them to wake up a pot of white bean chicken chili or add a flash of fire to a jar of mayonnaise.

12. Tepin

Scoville heat units (SHU): 50,000-100,000 🔥🔥🔥

The Tepin Pepper is a tiny treat with a lot of heat. Compact, vigorous plants produce lots of juicy, pea-sized fruits that are hot enough to make a cookie crumble. This is a perennial bush in warmer locations, so if it survives the winter, it will grow back bigger and more productive. Use it to heat up anything from honey to menudo to ice cream.

13. Thai

Scoville heat units (SHU): 50,000-100,000 🔥🔥🔥

The Thai Hot Pepper hits every type of cuisine with a delightful bolt of lightning. This compact plant throws out lots of slender 1"-3" fruits that grow with their tapered tips up, maturing from popping green to crackling yellow to flashing orange to sizzling red. A type of Bird Pepper, the plant grows to only about 8" tall, so you can plant several close together for a striking ornamental border and more tasty peppers, or interplant throughout the garden.

14. Firecracker

Scoville heat units (SHU): 80,000-100,000 🔥🔥🔥

The edible ornamental Firecracker Pepper sends showy clusters of 1" tapered fruit up and out, like a Roman candle, producing bursts of white, green, lavender, yellow, orange, and red, as it moves into full ripeness. When you get past the sensation that you’ve just eaten a flare, you’ll taste some fruitiness. Adds a sparkle of color and spiciness to any dish or marinade.

15. NuMex, Twilight

Scoville heat units (SHU): 30,000-50,000 🔥🔥🔥

The NuMex Twilight Pepper may be slow to mature, but when it does, it’s full of surprises. Small 2" fruits start out purple rather than green, then ripen through yellow, orange, and red. The peppers point up toward the sky, like flowers, and all four colors adorn the compact 1'-2' plant at the same time, turning this edible ornamental into a living bouquet of salty, slightly bitter peppers so blistering hot, you’ll want to report them to the sheriff. Plant several close together as a border, or grow one in a special pot on the patio. Use as you would any other criminally hot pepper.