Capparis portoricensis Urb.

• Title

  Capparis portoricensis Urb.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Capparis portoricensis Urb.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Capparis portoricensis Burro blanco White Caper-tree Capparidaceae Caper family Capparis portoricensis Urban, Symbolae Antillanae 1: 509. 1899. This is one of the large, evergreen trees of the dry, southwestern parts of Porto Rico, frequent at lower elevations, and locally ascending to about 450 meters. It grows also on Vieques Island, on the Virgin Island St. John, and on Dominica. It has nearly white, rather hard, and heavy wood; the bark is brown, slightly roughened, the twigs smooth, or minutely hairy. Like other species of Capparis, the flowers conspicuous and beautiful by their many long, white stamens, open in the late afternoon, looking like powder-puffs at the ends of twigs, and wilt during the night, appearing bedraggled the following morning. The flowering period of the tree extends over several weeks in the spring. Capparis (from the Greek name of the Caper-tree of Europe, Capparis spinosa) is a Linnaean genus, with about 150 species of trees and shrubs, natives of tropical regions. They have mostly thick and untoothed, alternate leaves, and large, usually white, clustered flowers. There are 4 sepals, and 4, sometimes small petals; the usually many, separate stamens have very slender, long-filaments and short anthers; the stalked, often long- stalked ovary contains few, or many ovules; there is no style, the depressed stigma, borne terminal on the ovary. The fruit is various in form, short, or long, usually falling to the ground without opening. Capparis portoricensis (of Porto Rico) may become a tree about 20 meters high, with a trunk up to about 0.7 meters in diameter. The thick, smooth, elliptic to obovate leaves are from 4 to 12 centimeters long, blunt, or bluntly short-pointed, on stalks from 5 to 10 millimeters long. The showy flowers are few or several together in terminal clusters, the individual ones on stout stalks from 7 to 15 millimeters long; the orbicular, green sepals are in 2 series, the inner ones from 12 to 14 millimeters long, the outer much shorter; the white, oblong-obovate petals are about 2 centimeters long, the white stamens about 5 centimeters long. The ellipsoid or obovoid fruit is from 3 to 6 centimeters long, its stalk long and slender. There are 5 other species of Capparis in the Porto Rico Flora.