"Naughty" Names - Jamaica Caper Seed Pods

When the seed pods of the Jamaica caper first appear, the shrub looks pretty dowdy. The  skinny  lumpy, brown pods, which grow up to 6 inches long, make the plant look sort of bedraggled - at least to me.

 But when they open, often twisting dramatically as they display their bright red interiors it's another story altogether. The plant, gorgeous in spring, goes through another showy season.

The seeds are black, about the size of a peppercorn, and strung together on a red, gelatinous "string." The other day the "joint was jumpin" with mockingbirds (sometimes flying away with entire pods), a red-bellied woodpecker, and doves. Cardinals also like the seeds, but they weren't around that morning.

Seed Pods -( The red smears are from the "goo" connecting the seeds)

The plant is listed in the 1753 Species Plantarum, the  source of the oldest valid botanical names, which was compiled by Karl Linnaeus, as Capparis cynophallophora. I haven't been able to discover yet who sent the first specimens to Europe. It could have been Sir Hans Sloane, who traveled to Jamaica and surrounding islands in 1687, and brought a 7-volume herbarium of species, including Jamaica caper,  he collected there back to England.

 It also could  have been an unnamed plant explorer who sent specimens to Leonard Plukanet in London.  Plukanet was a member of the Temple House Botany Club, a group which "encouraged collection of plants iin foreign lands, their propagation locally, and their scientific study." (1) He began publishing a lavishly illustrated catalog, Phytographia, in 1691-1692. I was unable to find out whether it contains Jamaica caper. After Plukanet died in 1706, Sloane bought his papers and collections. Linnaeus relied heavily on Sloane's and Plukanet's work, as well as that of others, in devising his system of plant classification.

Around  1735 Linnaeus went to work for the wealthy banker George Clifford in Holland. Ostensibly he served as his client's personal physician, but his real job was to catalog the plants in Clifford's extensive gardens, hothouses, and "cabinet of curiosities." He published Hortus cliffortianus in  1738, and it includes Jamaica caper. Hortus Cliffortianus was the first published work to use Linnaeus' new binomial system of classification. (2)

Illustration of Magnolia by Georg Dionysius Ehret-Cover Illustration (see note 1) 

The renowned botanical artist Georg Dionysius Ehret collaborated with Linnaeus on this work, and contributed 20 of its 24 illustrations. (I haven't been able to find an image of jamaica caper by Ehret, which doesn't mean there isn't one). He also drew up a table illustration Linnaeus's new system of plant classification. The two had something of a falling out over who actually had advised whom on this collaboration, with Linnaeus taking the credit.(3)

The species nameof the plant, cynophallophora, is from Greek, and refers to a dog's penis. It doesn't take much imagination to see the resemblance in the seed pods.  Perhaps that is a little  graphic for  some people, but folks  in the 17th and 18th centuries tended to call things as they saw them, and some words that are "dirty" today were in normal use in previous eras. Besides, Linnaeus and his predecessors had an awful lot of new plants to name. And he was a bit of a rascal when it came to dubious puns.

Jamaica Caper Seed Pods

Whether it was in Swedish or Latin, Linnaeus wrote with a lively, graphic style. He was able to convey a superb naturalist's eye for detail with a never-failing sense of wonder at the marvels of the world, and the journals he wrote about his travels and discoveries in the Swedish landscape are considered part of the nation's literature as well as factual works. However, his style did lead him into some troubles, as we shall see.

Linnaeus is known today as the "Father of Taxonomy." (the science of naming and classification of a organisms). An explosion of voyages of exploration and scientific inquiry in the 16th and 17th centuries had led to an unworkable chaos when it came to describing species. Species were identified with long Latin descriptions, and the same plant or animal could have numerous differing descriptions, leading to much duplication and misunderstandings.

More Seed Pods - Fun to Draw

Calling himself "the Prince of Botany," Linnaeus set himself the task of establishing order in this mess, and he did. He didn't create his system out of thin air, but relied heavily on the work of contemporaries and predecessors. One of his greatest achievements was stabilizing the principle of what made up a genus by arranging the genera into groups based on the number of reproductive parts in the flower. (4) He then established a hierarchy, which still stands in modified form, by breaking down organisms into ever-smaller groups, from kingdoms to orders, classes, genera and species. He was by no means the first naturalist to use a binomial system of classification, but the first to apply it consistently.

Linnaeus based his classification purely on the sexual arrangements of the flowers. To oversimplify, he determined classes of plants by the number of stamens and pistils, which he termed "husbands" and "wives" repspectively. He also described the structures of the stamens and pistils in terms of human sexual anatomy. This was bad enough for the faint-hearted, but his classes with one "wife" shared by multiple "husbands" was utterly beyond the pale. The class Dodecandria, for example, had one unfortunate - or lucky -  "wife" with up to 19 "husbands."

Not one to stop at half-measures, Linnaeus pushed the envelope further by using overtly sexual and erotic language. In 1729 he wrote, "The flowers' leaves... serve as bridal beds which the Creator has so gloriously arranged, adorned with such noble bed curtains, and perfumed with so many soft scents that the bridegroom with his bride might there celebrate their nuptials with so much the greater solemnity..."(5)

His contemporary, botanist Johann Siegesbeck, blasted this system as "loathsome harlotry," but Linnaeus got the last laugh by naming an ugly little weed, Siegesbeckia, after his detractor. In 1807, in her Fifty Plates of Green-House Plants,  botanical illustrator Henrietta Maria Moriarity, while acknowledging Linnaeus' genius,  declared that the Linnaean system was dangerous for young minds. (6)

Current judgement of the man ranges from tongue in cheek accusations as in "The way we name species was invented by a botanical pornographer,"(7) to more serious criticism that Linnaeus "was a bit of a sexual obsessive," and that {he and}... his sex-obsessed work would almost be laughable if they hadn't been so influential." Citing Capparis cynaphallophora, the author also referred to the botanist's "decided knack for the unsavoury image." (8)   The very down-to-earth writer Sue Hubbel, (whose work I admire), called Linnaeus "an unpleasant man" who gave "mean namings." In particular she was offended by his pun on a Latin vulgarism for a part of the female anatomy in his naming of a marine invertebrate. (9)

Be that as it may,  the man was responsible for naming somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000 plants and even more animals. Many of these names, published in Species Plantarum in 1753, and the 10th edition of Systema Naturae in 1758, are valid today, as is the classification hierarchy and convention of binomial nomenclature he established. Today he probably would be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, because he alternated between bouts of almost superhuman energy and periods of deep depression, but the energy was enough to carry the day.

Quadrella jamaicensis - new name for an old favorite

But back to Capparis cynophallophora, I have to lament that that is no longer the accepted name for the plant in our backyard. Nowadays plant taxonomists are more likely to grind specimens up in a blender for DNA sequencing than to examine them under a microscope. Although they did it using traditional taxonomic methods, Iltis and Cornejo broke my "Jamaica Caper" out of the Caper family entirely and relocated it in the related family, Brassiciaceae. It gets more complicated. Apparently there is an entire "caper complex" with regard to this plant. Capparis cynophallophora still is accepted as the name for the plants that grow in Jamaica, but in Florida we have a new species altogether - Quadrella jamaicensis, "Quadrella" being an old genus name retrieved from the taxonomic attic. (10)

We move with the times, but I hope we do not become so technically refined that we forfeit the color of the past.


Notes:
(1) James L. Reveal. Gentle Conquest: The Botanical Discovery of North America. With Illustrations from the Library of Congress. Sherwood Publishing, 1992, p. 26.
(2) Gill Saunders. Ehret's Flowering Plants. The Victoria and Albert Natural History Illustrators. Webb & Bower, 1987, p. 12.
(3) Kerry Grens,"The Sex Parts of Plants." The Scientist.Home/Archive/January2015/Foundations.
(4) Reveal, p. 45.
(5) "Carl Linnaeus." https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/linnaeus.html
(6) Jack Kramer. Women of Flowers. Stewart, Tabori & Chang. 1996. pp.146-149.
(7) Diane Kelly. "The Way We Name Species was Invented by a Botanical Pornographer." 6/25/2015.  (I couldn't create a link; Search under the title will bring up page).
(8) Hanne Blank. Straight:The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality. Beacon Press. 2012. Could not create link. Cited from Google Books using search string linnaeus+dog+penis+sexuality+hanne+blank.
(9) Susan Hubbell. Waiting for Aphrodite. First Mariner Books. 2000, p. 121. cited from Google Books.
(10) Hugh H. Iltis & Xavier Cornejo. "Studies in Capparaceae XXVIII: The Quadrella Cynophallophora Complex." Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas. 4(1): 93-115. July 2010.

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.