Interestingly enough, based on what I personally have learned about chili peppers over the past few years, I can state unequivocally that this is a far more complicated question than you know.

What we do know for a fact based on botanical origin rules, is that chili peppers originated in South America in the area between Bolivia and South-Western Brazil and have circumvented the globe from there, carried by both humans and birds.

We know that the Carribean and Central America have made a point of cultivating for the hotter chillies and as such, the C. chinenses from this region are quite varied and easily found. There are more varietals in this area than anywhere else in the world that score extremely high SHUs. This region is known as the pepper belt.

It is incorrectly believed that prior to Columbus’ voyages to the Americas, capsicums were virtually unknown anywhere but America, but we know that mongoloids during their ice age migrations to the Americas discovered the peppers and it is not hard to extrapolate that the chillies found their way to Asia by way of the northern ice bridge over the Bering Strait that these people are generally believed to have used.

As a result of this possible movement, West Asia, (India and Bangladesh) specifically has what is currently the Guinness Book of Records, record holder for the World’s hottest spice: the Bhut Jolokia. Due to the fact that there really is very little commercial trade established with this area in the form of fresh chilli peppers, it is very difficult to ascertain just how many different species of these hottest peppers there may be and until such trade is established, one can only go by what we are told. We have been told that this particular pepper has varying names, all over the region and cultural differences give the pepper different names even from one village to the next. Because of this we believe that there are species of chillies as yet unknown on this side of the world, because they simply have not been collected nor cultivated commercially.

Africa still is, truly, the dark continent. We have seen farmers cultivating the Fataali pepper, but we have personally found other peppers of similar intense heat in that area, at least by reputation. It is even more difficult to find commercial trade in Africa because of the unfortunate nature of travel on this continent and as such, I really doubt we have any idea what is available there.

Interestingly enough, with the movement of seeds around the planet, we also find in England a certain species of chili pepper descended from one of these Bangladeshi species that has scored higher on a SHU test than any other pepper anywhere: the Naga Dorset, albeit these chillies are grown in greenhouses.