CAPPARIDACE^. 



BILVA OF NORTH AMEMICA. 



31 



CAPPARIS. 



Flowers perfect ; sepals 4, rarely 5 ; petals usually 4, imbricated ; torus short, 

 destitute of basal appendages. Fruit baccate, stalked; embryo conyolute. 



LiniiKus, Gen. 155. — Adanson, ^am. PI. ii. 407. — A. L. 

 de Jussleu, Gen. 243. — Meisner, Gen. 17. — Endlieher, 



Gen. 893. — Bentham & Hooker, (?m. i. 108. — Eallloii, 

 Eist. PL iii. 174. 



Trees or shrubs, with watery acrid or often pung-ent juice, sometimes climbing or prostrate, 

 unarmed or armed with short, often recurved, stipular spines, glabrous, pubescent or variously lepidote. 

 Leaves conduplieate in vernation, alternate, rarely opposite or more rarely wanting, entire, feather- 

 veined, membranaceous or coriaceous ; stipules spinescent or setaceous, often confined to young or bar- 

 ren shoots. Flowers regular or irregular, axillary or supra-axillary, solitary, fascicled or arranged in a 

 terminal cyme or raceme, usually bracteate. Sepals valvate or imbricate, in two series, free, or the two 

 outer united in the bud, and splitting irregularly as the flower opens, naked or glandular on the inner 

 surface. Petals rarely more than four, inserted on the base of the receptacle. Stamens usually indefi- 

 nite, inserted on the receptacle ; filaments filiform, free, much longer than the short two-celled introrse 

 anthers. Ovary long-stalked, one to four-celled, with two or more parietal placentas ; stigma sessile, 

 orbiculate, rarely slightly two-lobedj ovules indefinite, campylotropous. Fruit globose, elongated or 

 siliquiform, indehiscent or rarely separating into three or four valves ; seeds renlform, numerous or indefi- 

 nite, immersed in pulp, exalbuminous j testa corneous or crustaceous. Embryo convolute ; cotyledons 



foliaceous, fleshy.^ 



The genus Capparis is widely and generally distributed over the warmer parts of the earth. More 

 than a hundred species, chiefly tropical, are distinguished. Its greatest development in number of 

 species is in Central and South America;^ one species, Capparis spinosa^ abounds in southern Europe, 

 extending through the Orient to India, where about thirty species are known ; '* two others occur in the 

 Orient,^ eight are found in south Africa," thirteen are tropical African,^ twelve are Australian,^ and one 

 is Hawaiian.^ Five species are known in China ^^ and eighteen in Central America and Mexico,'' while 

 two of the nine or ten West Indian '^ species reach the shores of southern Florida, the most northern 



station of the genus in America.'^ 



The useful properties of Capparis are not numerous. The flower-buds and sometimes the young 

 fruit of C. spinosa pickled in vinegar furnish the well-known capers of commerce." The bark of the 



^ The genus Cappnris may be divided, chiefly upon characters 

 found in the remarkable differences in tlie calvx, into nine sections 

 which have been sometimes considered gcnerically distinct. Each 

 is composed of species confined either to the Old or to the New 

 AYorld. (De Candolle, Prodr. i. 245. — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. 

 i. 109.) 



2 Eichler, Uartlus Fl. Brasil siil, 1, 2G7. 



8 LInnffius, Spec. 503. ~ Sibthorp, Fi. Grcec. t. 486. — Delessert, 

 Icon. Sel. iii. t. 10. — Baillon, Hist. PI. iii. 150, f. 174-179 ; Did. i. 

 618. 



* Hooker f. FL Brit. Ind. i. 173. 

 ^ Boissier, Fl. Orient i. 419. 

 ^ Harvey & Sonder, Fl. Cap. i. 61. 

 ' Oliver, Fl. Trop. Af. i. 94. 



8 Bentham, Fl. Austral, i. 93. 



9 Hlllebrand, Fl. Haw. Is. 14. 



10 Forbes & Hemsley, Jour. Linn. Soc. xxiii. 50. 



11 Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. i. 43. 



12 Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. Ind. 17, 



13 Capparis cynophallophora (Linnffius, Spec. 504. — Jacquin, Stlrp. 

 Am. 158, t. 98. — Descourtilz, Fl. Med. Antd. v. 193, t. 355.— 

 Eichler, \larth^ Fl. Brasil. xiii. 1, 282, t. 63, 2) a shrubby species 

 ■with oblong, blunt or emarginate, coriaceous leaves and linear fruit, 

 widely distributed through tropical America, is the second species 



found in Florida. 



» Capparis spinosa is a trailing undershrub, with large white 

 show}- axillary pedunculate flowers, growing naturally in the crev- 

 ices of rocks and walls. Its cultivation gives employment to a 



