7-Year Apple

7-Year Apple, Genipa clusiifolia, is a wonderful native plant that should be used more in south Florida. It doesn't make sense that it can be hard to find, because it should be a gardener's and landscaper's dream plant. Though it bears individual flowers intermittently all year, the "big event" occurs in  spring and summer. Then it produces intensely fragrant white, star-shaped flowers over the entire shrub. Flower buds and the tips of petals are apricot-colored. Even out of flower, its large (up to 6 inches long), evergreen glossy leaves make it a good choice for a medium-to-large sized shrub/small tree. The smooth leathery leaves are slightly turned under along the margins, which lowers the transpiration rate.

7-Year Apple - Staminate Plant

 A lot of plants are said to be trouble-free, but this one really is. Nothing bothers it. It grows freely on the back side of the beach dunes here. It is extremely drought-and-salt tolerant, untroubled by diseases, and free of insect pests. It is listed as the larval host of the Tantalus Sphinx Moth, but ours has never shown any evidence of chewing. In general it is also wind-resistant. Ours came through Hurricane Wilma in 2005 with minimal damage. Irma, last September, though, tore it apart.

When we moved to our house on a barren lot I broke a cardinal rule of gardening - don't place shrubs and trees too close to each other. I knew the theoretical mature size and spread of the things I was planting, but could not visualize how the bare slips I was committing to the earth would ever reach those dimensions. Besides, I didn't expect everything to thrive. I planted a Jamaica Caper, the Genipa, and a Coontie (Zamia pumila) on 3-4-foot radii in the vicinity of a medium Christmas Palm. Then later, I added a Lignum Vitae (Guajacum sanctum) which had outgrown its pot because there seemed no other place to put it.

 For a few years everything in the garden was lovely, and then everything took off at once. The Coontie has formed a massive clump at least 5 feet in diameter, and the Jamaica Caper is 12-15 feet tall. The Lignum Vitae, which already had developed a spreading form in the pot, spread even more in competition with the others. The Genipa started getting shaded out. Genipa bears most of its leaves in clusters at the ends of its  branches, so it is sort of hollow "inside," but the growth is typically dense and compact enough to protect it from wind. The branches on ours had become so elongated and spread out that Irma's winds ripped the shrub apart. It is badly disfigured now, and the problem of too little space for too many plants remains. But it is blooming so profusely now that I can't bring myself to be rational and ruthless.

My main reason for loving it is its incredibly fragrant flowers. By now  the Jamaica Caper has ceased flowering, but the Genipa is still going strong, and I go out at least once a day, but usually more, just to get my "hit" from the fragrance. Butterflies, skippers, other small insects, and probably moths, love the flowers too. Ours started blooming in March and is still not slowing down.

Gulf Fritillary and Genipa

The plants are dioecious - that is each individual plant has either "male" (staminate) or "female"(carpellate) flowers. The staminate plants produce clusters of flowers, while carpellate flowers appear singly. When you buy a Genipa, it's the luck of the draw which one you get, same as with hollies. You'll get fruit only with a carpellate plant close enough to a staminate plant to be pollinated.

Immature Fruits

The immature fruit isn't quite so "deco neon" - I'm no master of Photoshop Elements! In spite of the name, the fruit takes about a year to mature. Fruit in various states of maturity can be found on the same bush. It starts green, turns yellow, and then dark brown when ripe. It is about the size of a Comice pear. It is vaguely edible, but not palatable.

Fallen Ripe Fruit

I've never eaten a fermented prune, but that's what came to mind when I tasted Genipa. The fruit is little more than a pulpy sac containing numerous seeds, which are said to be emetic. Mockingbirds apparently have developed a trick of pecking a small hole in the fruit and eating the inside goodies - leaving an empty sac still hanging on the branch. Other wildlife, especially raccoons, eat the fruit as well.

Smashed on a Concrete Walkway
Anybody Hungry?

7-Year Apple is native to Cuba, the Bahamas, Turks , Caicos, Bermuda, and southern Florida. It grows in sandy or rocky substrates. Why do garden centers concentrate on exotics that need coddling when there are natives like this?

Summer Fragrance

One of the things that defines the transition from spring into summer here in the garden is fragrance. It starts with the Gardenia, whose heavy tropical fragrance  envelopes you like humidity, feels liquid enough to drink. Gardenias seem to suggest a seductive beauty, sultry southern nights, the songs of Billie Holiday. Sticking your nose into a gardenia flower and inhaling is near-intoxicating, as "high" as I need to be.


Since gardenias love acid soil, keeping one remotely happy in our alkaline conditions is a constant struggle, and Irma's salty winds set it back even more, but it still bloomed.  Right now it is teetering between permanent decline and slow recovery. Perhaps I should just replace it. The front yard, more protected from salty winds and a little shadier, might be a better location, but the front is crowded already. I would have to redo the area by the front door or dining room window (same area) so that we would be able to enjoy the perfume. Just one of the many landscaping dilemmas one runs into in a  garden, especially one as small as ours.


If the gardenia is like a heavy wine, the frangipani, Plumeria sp., is more like a refreshing sip of lemonade. Plumerias practice deceit pollination. Their light, sweet odor promises nectar, but the flowers don't deliver. Insects, especially the sphinx moth, keep looking for the nectar in vain, thereby transferring pollen.  Traditional Hawaiian leis are made of frangipani blossoms.

Yellow and White Blossoms Are More Frangrant Than Reds and Pinks

Frangipani copes with winter drought and cold by losing all its leaves, and the turgid, lumpy, leaf-scarred stems look dead. The first new growth and the flowers sprout from the very tip of the stems, and have an oddly other-worldly effect when in bud, like some growth out of science fiction.

New Leaves and Flower Buds

Frangipanis typically grow wider than tall. Thanks to Irma, our frangipani is leaning pretty badly. I may try to stake it, or just leave it as is, pretending I'm striving for a more picturesque effect. Before I do anything, I have to remove a mass of Gaillardias, but they're still blooming vigorously.


The flowers of Jamaica caper (Capparis cynophallophora) and 7-year apple ( Genipa clusiifolia) begin opening about the time the gardenia peaks. Just breathing near these 2 shrubs on a warm, late afternoon is a sensuous - even sensual - experience. This is when the white flowers begin serioiusly releasing their fragrance, sending olfactory signals to lure the moths that will pollinate them overnight. They are visited by day-flying insects and butterflies as well, and emit periodic bursts of fragrance throughout the day.

"Morning After" Pink Flowers

When in bloom Jamaica caper is one of our most beautiful native plants. White 4-petaled flowers open in late afternoon or early evening and in the course of the next couple of days morph through a suffused pink to deep maroon before falling. Numerous long stamens whose filaments go through the same color progression as the petals radiate out from the flower's throat, creating a startling beauty.  During the day the flowers can be humming with bees and small flies. I have noticed monarchs nectaring on them as well.

Jamaica Caper in Bloom

The plant's glossy evergreen leaves, which reflect light strongly, make the plant attractive even when it is not in bloom.  Rufino Osorio writes, "The leaves are an extremely dark green .... The effect is hard to describe - the plant appears both dark and bright at the same time." (A Gardener's Guide to Florida's Native Plants, p. 239). Numerous scales give the undersides of the leaves a scurfy appearance. New twigs are cinnammon brown, and older wood is gray.

Jamaica Caper Inflorescence

The seed pod is a brown pod 4 - 8 inches long. The pods on my shrub are more like 3 - 4 inches long. Linnaeus thought they resembled a dog's phallus, hence the species name, cynophallophora. Folks in those days apparantly were less prudish than we are, despite  our foul language, and called things as they saw them. The inside of the seed pod is bright red, and the open pods extend the decorative  phase of the shrub. Cardinals and mockingbirds relish the seeds.

Open Seed Pods

Jamaica caper is an absolutely "cast iron" landscape plant in frost-free areas of Florida once it is established. An inhabitant of coastal hammocks, it is both drought and salt-tolerant. It is untroubled by disease or pests. Occasionally ours shows some light damage from the leaf-rolling larva of some insect. Only  once in the past 20+ years has it become noticeably defoliated, and it recovered quickly and completely. I never water it, though since it is close to the seawall, its roots no doubt reach into the brackish water table. During a close pass of a hurricane years ago, salt/brackish water 1-3" deep covered the root area for several hours during high tide without doing any damage.


Our Jamaica caper was not damaged much by Hurricane Irma. Again, the root area was under water until the storm surge subsided. In fact, much of the back yard was covered during the surge, but no plants suffered any noticeable dmage from the inundation. (The surge line didn't reach the gardenia). I can't remember if or how badly the Jamaica caper was defoliated. There was just too much other stuff going on. There were very few broken branches. In any event, now you'd never guess it had been through a hurricane, while the eastern side of the bougainvilleas in the front yard is still not completely leafed out.


I haven't made a  satisfying watercolor of the Jamaica caper flowers in all the years we've lived here. My quick studies don't capture the glossiness of the leaves or the combination of grace and sturdiness that characterize this lovely plant. But I try.

Jamaica Caper

Next up : 7-year apple.