No, all peppers aren't actually the same plant

There's a viral claim going around that the green, red, orange, and yellow bell peppers you see in grocery stores are all the same plant.

As the theory goes, peppers start out as green, then turn yellow and orange as they ripen, before finally turning red.

Here's the thing: It's not true.

The claim went viral on Twitter when Call Me Amy, a lifestyle blogger, posted it. It has more than 51,000 retweets and 260,000 likes. It blew the minds of thousands of commenters, and was picked up uncritically by everyone from the BBC to HuffPost.

But it's simply not true that the different peppers you see in the grocery store are all one plant.

Look at any seed catalogue, and you'll see different seeds for different types of peppers. There are different ones for green, red, yellow, and orange.

It is true that some green peppers in grocery store are unripe red peppers, some of which start out green before turning red. Kevin Lawrence, a farmer at Lawrence Farms Orchards in Newburgh, New York, told INSIDER in an interview that red peppers are more expensive because they take longer to grow and need more protection.

"They had to sit on the vine longer," Lawrence said. "They're more prone to infection and disease from sitting on the plant for a longer time."

But some green peppers are fully ripe, and have always been green.

"Some peppers I had, they're green," he said. "They stay green. They don't get red."

Yellow, orange, and the rarer purple peppers can sometimes start green, but can also always be their final color depending on the plant.

"It's a yellow pepper. and it starts out yellow. and it stays yellow," Lawrence said, speaking of his pepper crop. "Purple peppers — sometimes they start out purple. And other times they started out green and turned purple. So it does vary from plant to plant and from different seeds."

So no: Not all peppers are the same, although it's possible that your green peppers are simply unripe red ones. Glad we cleared that up.