Chilli plants make great gifts for the cook or grow your own enthusiast. The more compact varieties will thrive in a cool conservatory, sheltered patio, or even a sunny window sill and the more you crop them the more they produce.

The chili pepper (also chile pepper or chilli pepper, from Nahuatl chilli) is the fruit of plants from the genus Capsicum, members of the nightshade family, Solanaceae. The term in British English and in Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaysia and other Asian countries is just chilli without “pepper”.