THE CAPER FAMILY 



CAPPARIDACE^ Lindley 



HIS family includes some 35 genera and 400 species, or more, widely 

 distributed, mostly natives of warm temperate and tropical regions. 

 It comprises herbs, shrubs, and trees, with alternate or very rarely 

 opposite, simple or palmately compound leaves, the flowers solitary 

 or in cymes or racemes, either regular or quite irregular. There are 4 to 8 sepals 

 and usually 4 petals; the receptacle is either short or elongated; the stamens are 

 usually many, inserted on the receptacle, sometimes adnate to the stalk of the 

 ovary, their anthers oblong; the ovary is i-celled, containing many ovules borne 

 in two rows on each of the two placentas. The fruit is a capsule or a berr}^ 



Only the following species is represented in our arborescent flora, but we have 

 a number of herbs and a few shrubs. 



The generic name Capparis is modified from the ancient greek appellation of 

 the Caper tree of southern Europe, C. spinosa Linnaeus, the type of the genus, 

 the flower-buds of which, pickled, are the capers much used as a condiment. 



JAMAICA CAPER TREE 



GENUS CAPPARIS [TOURNEFORT] LINN^US 

 Species Capparis jamaicensis Jacquin 



SMALL tree which occurs on the Keys and adjacent mainland of 

 southern Florida and on the West Indian islands, from the Bahamas 

 to Jamaica and Barbadoes, growing to a height of 7 meters or more, 

 with a trunk up to 2 dm. in thickness. 

 The thin reddish brown bark is somewhat furrowed, the angled and flattened 

 young twigs densely brown-scurfy, this characteristic scurf covering also the pedi- 

 cels, calyx, the pods, and the under side of the leaves. The thick oblong or oblong- 

 lanceolate leaves are persistent through the winter, 10 cm. long or less, notched at 

 the apex in all specimens seen from Florida, but often pointed in West Indian 

 specimens, the base narrowed or rounded, the upper surface bright green, very 

 smooth and shining; the stout leaf-stalks are 6 to 12 mm. long; when growing 

 near or in water the tree produces water-shoots, which bear narrowly linear leaves, 

 often 2 dm. long, and only i to 2 cm. wide. The large flowers are usually in 2's 

 or 3's at the end of short peduncles in the axils of the upper leaves, the stout, angu- 



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