If the other side has leaves, I'd let it go and see how things shake out. That close branch does look dead, but, I wouldn't bother cutting it off at this point unless it's in the way.

I'm sure no pepper expert - but I'd snip that off asap.....the problem seems to be radiating down the stem that the other branch is on - so if there was more to this plant than those two - I'd snip off that whole thing.

I'd also move it away from your other peppers, just in case - or be aggressive and just get rid of it as you have 2 others....

i brought in a large pot last year that had 4 nice plants in it they was all doing great for the first couple months then they started to die off 1 by 1 looking almost like your photo i tried the cutting them back and yet it still ended up dieing in the end but i did not pull the ball out and trim the roots the last plant of the 4 lasted 1 extra month but then it ended up doing the same thing .i would still recommend cutting it back till you run back into green live flesh

I know what that is, same thing happened to my bonchi over the winter.

There is a mold or a fungus growing in the stem. It will not get better. Cut the affected branches off. If its already reached the main trunk, it may be too late.

When I did the autopsy on mine, it appears the infection entered through the cut stem end (there was furry white mold growing in it that the leaves had hidden from me until it was too late).

Treat it like cancer, cut out anything that might be infected, and hope for the best.

t-bird - The next node down is the main stem. When I brought the plants in I cut them back to the first pair of splits after the main bifurcation. The choice at this point would be to lop off the near side "Y" at the base of the bifurcation, or just lop the whole thing off below the main split.

I'm going to give it another day or two to see how things progress.

Thanks for the input guys!

Okay, just letting you know though that the wait or see thing is what I did, and it cost me the entire plant.

Edymnion - We must have crossed in the posting (I get distracted at work), yours wasn't there when I started my reply.

I saw your post tonight and decided to cut the one branch back to the main trunk.

I left the other branch intact since it has one cluster of healthy looking leaves still, but after getting a good look at I think it may be too late already... One whole side (that the dead branch was on) of the main stem is pale yellow, the other side (with the live branch) is a nice dark green.

At least I have two that seem to be hanging in.

Hopefully you can save it.

On mine, I had one cut back to 5 stems coming from the main trunk as a bonsai so that it looked like a hand. About half way through the winter the tips started turning yellow and then brown, just like yours. I figured "Well, there are no branches or anything up there at the tips, its probably just dying back a little because there's no reason to support that growth up there."

I watched it creep down thinking "Man, thats ruining the look I worked so hard to get, but oh well, if it couldn't support it, it couldn't support it." Then it got down to the living branches and still didn't stop. The leaves on those branches immediately wilted and died, and then then whole thing just went south very rapidly from there.

Bad news was it wasn't pretty, and I couldn't stop it (didn't try that hard to though, by the time I got in gear it was too late). Good news is that I had other cut peppers in the same room that showed no ill effect at all, so it didn't seem to be contagious.

Still not 100% sure on what it was or how it happened, but for me at least it remained an isolated incident.