bird's eye chili // cili padi

order: solanales
family: solanaceae
genus: capsicum
species: frutescens
cultivar: cili padi

First Story

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2 december 2012

Earlier this year, a good friend of mine from Malaysia sent me seeds of bird's eye chili and key lime from her kitchen. I ordered them from her, so I can be sure to have the type of chili and key lime I'm looking for, ones that I knew back home. Bird's eye chili plants are short-lived perennials that grow into knee-high bush with freely branching habit. If it's indeed the correct type, its small fruits should be upright and not drooping. I sowed all of the chili seeds in a pot, very precisely on the 11th of July 2002. The chili seeds sprouted after less than a week. I ended up having a forest of chili plants. As I already have a plentiful amount of tropical plants in my room, I can only allow myself to keep a small number of them. I managed to have a friend take over half of the forest. I divided the rootball into two halves, replanted the two parts into separate pots and handed one of them to him.

I find that, these are rather easy plants to keep, not as finicky as many other tropical plants. However you shouldn't let the soil completely dry out. These plants are rather thirsty and need frequent watering. They are the one plant that I water the most often. In summer, when it's sunny and windy, I would water it twice a day. In winter, I water it once every other day. Even though the plant is not finicky, it does fall prey to aphids very easily. These creatures propagate at an unbelievable rate both sexually and asexually. So unless you control the plant at each watering, the creatures will make use of the time during your absence to set up colonies all over the plants and suck the plants dry of their life sap. By the time you notice a group of aphids on a leaf, the leaf is mostly damaged beyond rescue. However, as long as you can keep the number of aphids low, you can keep the plants growing just nicely.

Update

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24 february 2014

After having not updated on the chili plants for over a year, I'm finally posting some photos from year 2013. The first shows the appearance of the very first flower of the plants in the height of summer. While the petals of the flowers are white, the inner organs have a violet colour. Flowers are borne at terminals and are slightly drooping. In the latter photo, green and red chilies can be seen on the same plants. By autumn, we're provided with more chilies than we can consume. I gave some of them to my friends and let the rest ripen on the branch.

The taste of cili padi is in my opinion more refined than the regular chilies. When used slightly, it gives a perfect tone of pungency to your cooking. I especially prefer them when making the condiments for Hainanese chicken rice and Bak Kut Teh, both of which are favorite dishes among the Malaysian of Chinese descent.

As it seems, the aphids made their way back this spring. Though this batch of them look slightly different from the one from last year. The adult aphids put on stripes across their backs. That however doesn't make their appearance any more condonable. Every two to three days I would carry out a "health check".