Capparis L.

Genus composed of about 180 species (although currently there is a tendency to reduce the number of species by including many of them within the infraspecific variability of other well characterised species), distributed mainly through dry and even desert areas of Eurasia and North Africa. In North Africa there are 3 species. One of them, C. spinosa, has great variability, which lead to dozens of species, subspecies, varieties and forms being described over the last 2 centuries. Since the first revision of the genus in the Mediterranean and western Asia made by Zohary (1960), to the last by Fici (2014), there have been numerous attempts to clarify the complex group of C. spinosa and related “species”. Among them it is worth mentioning the work of Inocencio et al. (2006), and at a national level in North Africa, those from Morocco (Saifi et al. 2011), Tunisia (Saadaoui et al. 2011) and Egypt (Moubasher et al. 2011). In this project, following the same approach taken by other authors (e.g. Boulos in Flora of Egypt, 1999) and is maintained in The World Flora Online and POWO (2023), we have followed a simplified classification. In essence, we follow the recent proposal by Fici (2014).

Updated by: J. Charco.