Description:

• Scramblers or shrubs with long branches usually with a pair of stipular spines at base of leaf
• Leaves alternate, simple, entire, petiolate
• Inflorescence terminal or axillary, paniculate, racemose, corymbose or umbellate, rarely with single, axillary flowers; bracts usually 0
• Sepals 4, broadly ovate to orbicular, often with outer and inner ones unequal in size, convex, imbricate, free or nearly so
• Petals 4, oblong or obovate, not clawed, usually white or cream becoming brownish
• Stamens 6-many, free
• Ovary on a gynophore at least 5 mm long, ovoid to almost spherical, with 4-many ovules on 2-many placentas; stigma indistinct, rarely capitate, on a style usually less than 1 mm long
• Fruit a berry, spherical to cylindrical
• Seeds 1-many, embedded in a fleshy pulp; embryo convolute
• x = 6, 10 (aneuploids)

Nomenclature:

• Capparis L.
  • Linnaeus: 503 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 222 (1754)
  • Sonder: 61 (1860) in part
  • Gilg & Gilg-Benedict: 184 (1915)
  • Pax & Hoffmann: 172 (1936)
  • Phillips: 355 (1951)
  • Wild: 235 (1960)
  • Elffers et al.: 58 (1964)
  • Tölken: 63 (1969)
  • Tölken: 144 (1970)
  • Wild & Gonçalves: 53 (1973)
  • Fici: 52 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 250, widespread in the tropical and subtropical areas of the world
• Southern Africa: Species 5, widespread