For anyone who likes to spice up (sorry for the pun!) the flower beds with non-flowers, or who enjoy tucking pots of plants here and there, the ornamental (and quite edible, but HOT) hot peppers are incredibly beautiful plants that are very, very easy to grow and produce like crazy.
Amongst those I've tried -
green foliage, white flowers, peppers that ripen pale yellow to lavendar to orange to red:
Centennial Rainbow, Gumdrop, Prettier in Purple (I stabilized from a cross), Lollipops (ditto).
purple foliage, purple flowers, peppers that ripen pale yellow to lavendar to cream, to yellow to orange to red:
Chinese Five Color, Festival (I stabilized from a cross), Spectral (ditto), Vietnamese Multicolor, Pretty in Purple, Bolivian Rainbow
variegated foliage - typically green, lavendar and white, peppers that go green to black purple to red:
Filius Blue, Trifetti, Variegata
Dark purplish green foliage, purple flowers, purple to black peppers ripen red:
Pretty Purple, Purple Robe, Little Nubian
Green and white foliage, green and white striped fruit ripen red:
Fish
Some pictures can be found here -
http://nctomatoman.topcities.com/HotPepperTable.htm
One thing I've noticed - the ease at which peppers cross, and perhaps because of this, the wide variability of plants from a named variety. So, with hot peppers, it is really difficult to know exactly what a particular variety is supposed to look like. The good news - the crossing makes it easy to come up with new things (after a few years of growouts and selections), and even the unexpected is a really attractive plant.
Many of these hot Peppers are also amazing in that they will even blossom and produce fruit if left in their 4 inch initial transplant pot!
If I were to choose my favorites for appearance, it would have to be Pretty Purple, chinese Five Color, Vietnamese Multicolor, and Bolivian Rainbow.
Anyone who has dared to taste/eat any of the above, I would love to have some commentary on flavor and relative levels of heat! I grow loads of hot peppers, but mostly just to look at them, save seed, and give away - the odd one does make it into our various spicy dishes, though.