Cleome spinosa Jacq.

• Authority

  Britton, Nathaniel L. Flora Borinqueña.

• Family

  Cleomaceae

• Scientific Name

  Cleome spinosa Jacq.

• Description

  Species Description - The specific botanical names given to this large, annual, herbaceous plant refer to the two, characteristic prickles usually developed at the bases of the leaf-stalks, although not always. The Spanish name cited above is in allusion to its frequent growth along streams, and the plant is also known as Vola tines punzantes, which, in direct English translation, is Prickly conjurors. Spider-flower is the usual English name, but it is also called Sambo and Wild Massambee. It is common in waste and cultivated grounds in Porto Rico, and nearly throughout the West Indies and continental tropical and warm-temperate America, ranging north into the southern United States, frequently grown, for ornament, in flower gardens, and recorded as found also in tropical Africa. Cleome (the derivation of the name is uncertain) is a Linnaean genus, comprising about 75 species or herbs and low shrubs, their leaves digitately compound, or those of some species simple, the flowers clustered, or solitary. The calyx is 4-divided, or of 4, separate sepals; there are 4, clawed petals, nearly alike, and few or numerous stamens; the ovary contains several or many ovules, and the style is short, or wanting. The fruit is an elongated capsule, usually many-seeded, the seeds roughened or tubercled. Cleome spinosa is upright, glandular-hairy, branched, from 0.6 to 1.5 meters high. The lower leaves are long-stalked, and have 5 or 7, lance-shaped, pointed, untoothed leaflets from 2.5 to 9 centimeters long; the upper leaves are smaller, short-stalked, and grade into the simple, ovate bracts of the flower-clusters. The individual flowers are long-stalked; the narrowly lance-shaped sepals are 7 or 8 millimeters long; the purplish or nearly white, obovate petals are about 2 centimeters long, and there are 6 long stamens, borne at the base of the long stalk of the ovary; there is no style, the stigma being borne in the top of the ovary. The slender capsule is from 6 to 13 centimeters long:, about 3.5 millimeters thick, usually longer than its stalk. Four other Cleomes are found in Porto Rico.

• Discussion

  Jasmin del rio Spider-flower Caper Family Cleome spinosa Jacquin, Enumeratio Systematica Plantarum 26. 1760. Cleome pungens Wildenow, Enumeratio Plantarum Horti Botanici Berolinensis 2: 689. 1809.