California Reaper

Fruity and sweet up front, with citrus and peach notes and less heavy floral perfume than a red Carolina Reaper; the burn arrives quickly and finishes cleaner than the parent Reaper.

California Reaper is a named Capsicum chinense cultivar from Tyler Farms’ Innovation Acre, not a misspelling of Carolina Reaper. Pods start light green and ripen to peach or light orange, with the wrinkled, blistered skin and scorpion-style tail of the Reaper parent. Plants are medium-to-tall bushes, typically 3–5 ft (90–150 cm), and need a long warm season. Open-pollinated seed has circulated since about 2017; the originator spent multiple seasons selecting the line, but no published F-generation or HPLC heat test exists. Use it like other superhots: tiny amounts in sauce, salsa, or powder. Gloves are required when cutting ripe pods.

Steve Bender, head horticulturist at Tyler Farms’ Innovation Acre program in Southern California, selected this line as a Carolina Reaper × Jay’s Peach Ghost Scorpion cross. It was one of the first named peppers released from that project, after several seasons of selection for a peach-colored Reaper-shaped pod. It is not a California-grown selection of Ed Currie’s red Carolina Reaper, and it has never held a Guinness heat record. The similar names still cause frequent mix-ups on recipe and SEO pages.