never seen anything like this!
how is the flavor?

When I was in Macedonia, my friend would freeze them whole, and bring them out to roast in the wintertime. They had a rich, sweet-hot (very hot toward the top) flavor and tasted freshly roasted. The texture of the skin is grainier than a smooth skinned variety, but not unpleasant.
This is my first year growing them in the US. I've looked hard online and found a couple Bulgarian varieties with horizontal striations, but those are smaller, brighter red, and not as heavily striated.
The name, "Rezha" might be a village dialect name for this particular pepper. Two other sets of seeds that I grew from Macedonian villages were called "Zharena" and "Chudo." They ended up being what appears to be this same pepper with horizontal striations, though I'm not positive they have the same heat. The green ones I saw in Macedonia might also have been a different variety. I'm trying to find if other people have seen or grown these peppers before, because if not I'd like to introduce them to SSE. I've already looked through their 2009 yearbook and I didn't see anything I thought to be a match.

Those are interesting looking peppers, would love some seeds if you have any to spare in the future. Thanks. Jackie

I would love to swap seeds with you if you have any that you are willing to trade -
Danny

Yes.
I didn't like the texture at all -- like bark and not very hot.

{{gwi:1191152}}

That looks like the same pepper, trfanatic. May I ask where you obtained the seed, and under what name?
As for the texture, did you eat it raw? Did you try it at the green stage and when it was ripe?

In general I see horizontal striations occasionally on some of the peppers that I grow such as jalapenos and the Zorka variety. My thought is that this characteristic is an indicator of plant stress. For cooking I avoid these rough textured skin peppers and use the ones with smoother surfaces.

I know that some peppers get horizontal marks, but these horizontal striations are a characteristic of the variety. The word "rezha" in Macedonian means "engraved."
The texture is rough if these peppers are eaten fresh, but roasted they soften up and in addition to being very hot, they're extremely sweet.
I've roasted several green ones now (I'm not positive I have the red variety, as none of mine have changed yet), and they're much hotter than I remember. I have feferoni, a hotter unnamed Macedonian pepper, hot Hungarian wax, and jalapenos. Rezha are way hotter than any of these. Not habanero hot, but hotter than the midlevel peppers. They also have a strange slow creeping burn that starts out low and takes about 5 minutes to reach full force, targeting the sides of the tongue.

Thanks for the pics!

Euarto,
I'm wondering if there's a good cognate for "rezha" in English?
Maybe something like "razed," "rased," "rash," or even "ridged"?
Then again, perhaps there isn't a common Indo-European root?
Thanks,

Josh

Josh, I've no idea about the word itself.
So far, after talking to multiple Macedonians, I'm not getting one clear name. In the villages of Kalugeritsa and Zleovo, they call this pepper "rehzha," (Ñежа) which I'm spelling phonetically to avoid mispronunciation. In the village of Injevo, this pepper is called "zharena."(жаÑена) "Zhar" in Macedonian means "embers." In the bigger town of Radovis, they are loosely referred to as "vezeni piperki," (везени пипеÑки) which means "needlepoint." Still another person in Radovis told me they are called "sevrija." (ÑевÑиÑа)
I had a Macedonian friend go into a seed store in Radovis, and ask for the actual name of the pepper. The worker there couldn't give him a name and said simply that they are "domashni piperki" or peppers that people grow at home.

Here are some updated photos of how they're looking 3 weeks later.