Capparis decidua (Forssk.) Edgew.
Sodada decidua Forssk.
Eng.: Bare Caper. Spa.: Alcaparrera del desierto. Fre.: Caprier sans feuilles. Ara.: Karira, karir, tondob, tundub, sodad, murkheit, kursan, kabbar, iknin, (Hassānīya): egnin, (the fruit): hunbug. Tamahaq: Ajaêlayam, aûjungun, ajangham. Tubu: Marya, kusomo.
Tree, small, upright, up to 6 m in height, with well defined or more frequently tortuous trunk, depending on where it grows and the pressure which it has undergone by herbivores and man. Bark greyish-brown, fissured longitudinally in trunk and old branches. Branching dense, with erect branches with pendular endings, glabrous. Foliage sparse; from a distance it often appears to be a leafless tree. Young branchlets green, glabrous, with small leaves, scarce and far apart. Leaves (0.4-2 × 0.1-0.5 cm), from ovate-oblong to oblong, ending in a spiny mucro, green and glabrous on both sides, usually narrower than the branchlet on which they are borne. Stipules (2.5-4 mm), spiny, straight or slightly retrorse, whitish. Flowers in groups of 2-8 (umbels, racemes or corymbs), rarely solitary, zygomorphic 0.7-2 cm in diameter. Petals ovate, red or reddish-orange, covered with a tomentum of whitish hairs, especially along the margins. Stamens 5-18. Fruit globose, almost spherical, first green then reddish, sometimes bluish due to the waxy layer covering it, 0.5-1.2 cm in diameter.
Flowering:
February to April.
Fruiting:
May to July.
Habitat:
Very diverse terrains in desert and subdesert areas, stony and sandy areas, hillsides and valley bottoms, silty floodplains, etc.
Distribution:
Saharo-Sindian, also extending over much of the Sudano-Zambezian region. North Africa, Middle East, reaching towards the E to western India. In North Africa it grows in the western, southern and eastern Sahara.
Conservation status:
Very rare but widely distributed species. Currently, in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species it is evaluated as Least Concern (LC) at a global level (Oldfield, 2023). In the Livre Rouge de la flore vasculaire du Maroc (Fennane, 2021) it has been considered as Near Threatened (NT). In the updated red list of Egypt (Shaltout & Bedair, 2023) it has been considered as Near Threatened (NT).
