Capparis cartilaginea Decne.
C. galeata Fresen., C. inermis Forssk., C. spinosa subsp. cartilaginea (Decne) Maire & Weiller
Eng.: Cartilage caper. Ara.: Kabbar, lassaf (Sudan).
Shrub with upright main stems, then promptly decumbent, with branches that extends along the ground or sometimes rising supported on shrubs or rocks. Sometimes it forms subshrubs of up to 5 m in diameter and even wider. Branches glabrous, whitish due to the waxy coating that covers the entire plant. Internodes 5-14 cm, somewhat fleshy. Stipules curved, retrorse, slightly decurrent, reddish-orange, 0.2-0.5 cm long, 0.1-0.2 cm wide at the base, caducous, leaving a basal tubercle as they fall. Leaves (2-8 × 1.5-8 cm), ovate, suborbicular or broadly elliptic, with apex entire or emarginate, sometimes mucronate (mucro brownish-yellow, 1-3 mm, straight or curved), always fleshy, leaf veins slightly prominent or inconspicuous, except for the midrib. Petiole 0.5-3 cm. Flowers strongly zygomorphic, sepals 2-5 × 1.7-2.5 cm. Pedicels thick, 3-6 mm. Stamens 30-80. Fruit large for the genus (2.5-9 × 1.5-3 cm), from longly obovate to ellipsoid; green at first, becoming red and opening longitudinally when ripe; it opens only on one side first, showing its yellowish interior and its pulp full of small seeds; then it opens on the other or several sides.
Flowering:
February to November.
Fruiting:
March to December.
Habitat:
Dry terrains, including deserts, in tropical and subtropical areas. From almost sea level to about 2,000 m in altitude.
Distribution:
East Africa (from Egypt to Tanzania) and SW Asia, reaching towards the E to Pakistan. In North Africa, it is distributed in the eastern parts of Egypt (including the Sinai Peninsula) and Sudan, reaching inland up to the Tibesti Massif (Chad).
Observations:
The name of the species has been highly controversial because initially it was named as C. inermis Forssk., but was lectotypified as C. cartilaginea Decne. The species appears with the latter name in numerous regional Floras, but from 1984 it was began to be named as C. sinaica Veill. (e.g. Flora of Egypt), name that really corresponds to C. aegyptia Lam. (in its specific or infraspecific sense) from which it becomes a synonym. Thus, following a proposal from Rivera et al. (2003), the most commonly used name C. cartilaginea is accepted by the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT). Some authors have subsequently tried to include it as subspecies of C. spinosa (Fici, 2015), but as shown by Moubasher et al. (2011) based on RAPD type markers, C. cartilaginea is separated from the C. spinosa group.
Conservation status:
Rare but widely distributed species. Currently, it has not been assessed at a global level in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.