Candy Cane

Sweet and mild like a slender bell pepper, with a crisp snap from thin walls. Green-striped fruit tastes more vegetal; fully red fruit is sweeter and richer. No perceptible heat.

Candy Cane (sold as Candy Cane Red F1) is a Capsicum annuum hybrid snack pepper bred by PanAmerican Seed in West Chicago, Illinois, and released in 2017 as one of the first sweet striped peppers meant for eating rather than ornament alone. Elongated fruits run about 9–10 cm long and 3–4 cm wide. They start green with cream-white vertical stripes, take on a red blush, and finish solid red as the stripes fade. Compact, mounded plants grow 46–61 cm tall with green-and-ivory variegated leaves and do well in containers or in-ground beds. Flavor is bell-like: vegetal and crisp when striped, sweeter when fully red. Fruit is edible at every stage. A later sister release, Candy Cane Chocolate Cherry (2021), is a distinct mini-bell that ripens chocolate-and-cherry striped rather than solid red.

PanAmerican Seed introduced Candy Cane Red F1 in 2017 as one of the first sweet, edible striped snack peppers; earlier striped types were mostly hot (such as the Fish pepper) or purely ornamental. The name comes from the unripe pods’ green-and-white striping. A sister HandPicked hybrid, Candy Cane Chocolate Cherry F1, followed in 2021 with mini-bell fruit that ripens to chocolate-and-cherry stripes. Candy Cane Red was later named a favorite edible ornamental in LSU AgCenter trials and sits in the ornamental-pepper group inducted as 2022 Louisiana Super Plants. Pedigree parents are not published; it is a proprietary F1 from PanAmerican/Ball Horticultural.