Male & Female Sweet /bell Peppers ?

[Chipchopper]

I heard a snip-it of information today, which sounds like nonsense to me, but is it strictly true ?
Apparently the peppers that have 4 bumps on the bottom are the females and the taller, thinner ones with only 3 bumps on the bottom are males.
Both contain seeds but the "males" have fewer.

A good conversation topic at dinner parties and BBQs but what evidence is there to support such a claim ?

[grasscarp]

Myth. The number of lobes is related to the specific variety of pepper. There are varieties of peppers that produce 2, 3-4, or 3-5 lobed peppers.

[hammerman]

Utter nonsense. Pepper flowers are dioecious....they have both male and female sex organs. How could the "male" fruit have seeds ?

If anyone wants to see a good example of seperate sex flowers (monoecious), look at a begonia. You will see a large female flower (with a seed pod at the bottom) surrounded by a pair of smaller male flowers.

[Chipchopper]

Of course, it was a huge myth, probably started my a chef, who just used it as an aid to select the type needed for a particular dish, but it did get a lot of people going, on the internet.
The only part about this myth that, I think might be true, is that the ones with more lobes having more seeds, this, I think would stand to reason, purely because, they are bigger and therefore likely to have more segments inside, to which the seeds are attached.

[DTCwordfan]

How about these babies then?
http://your.asda.com/news-and-blogs/add-some-colour-to-your-plate-with-stripy-peppers-exclusive-to-asda

[Chipchopper]

Love them stripes DT, they must be sergeant peppers :-)

[DTCwordfan]

very good!