Fresh Hanging Chilies Royalty-Free Stock Image

Beautiful fresh hanging chilies at Seattle city fish market. The chili pepper, chilli pepper, or chili, is the fruit of the plants from the genus Capsicum. Even though chilis may be thought of as a vegetable, their culinary usage is generally as a spice, the part of the plant that is usually harvested is the fruit. The name, which is spelled chili, chile, or chilli, comes from Nahuatl chīlli via the Spanish word chile. The term chili in most of the world refers exclusively to the smaller, hot types of Capsicum. Chili peppers and their various cultivates originate in the Americas; they are now grown around the world because they are widely used as spices or vegetables in cuisine, and as medicine.Chili peppers have been a part of the human diet in the Americas since at least 7500 BC and perhaps earlier. There is archaeological evidence at sites located in southwestern Ecuador that chili peppers were already well domesticated more than 6000 years ago, and is one of the first cultivated crops in the Americas that is self-pollinating.Chili peppers are thought to have been domesticated at least five times by prehistoric peoples in different parts of South and North America, from Peru in the south to Mexico in the north and parts of Colorado and New Mexico (Ancient Pueblo Peoples).Christopher Columbus was one of the first Europeans to encounter them, and called them peppers because of their similarity in taste (not in appearance) with the Old World peppers of the Piper genus.