Flora of Israel – Caper

Whether growing in the cracks of the Western Wall or in the Judean desert, in places like Ein Gedi, people are surprised when I point out this bush and they learn that it is a caper bush (Capparis spinosa) and that the flower buds are the capers that they’ve eaten pickled in salads or with salmon. The caper is a perennial winter-deciduous plant that bears rounded, fleshy leaves and large white to pinkish-white flowers.

The flowers are complete, sweetly fragrant, showy, with four sepals, and four white to pinkish-white petals, many long violet-colored stamens, and a single stigma usually rising well above the stamens. The caper flower is the emblem of Neot Kedumim, the Biblical Landscape Reserve. The caper plant is a citizen of the world, native to the Mediterranean, East Africa, Madagascar, south-western and Central Asia, Himalayas, the Pacific Islands, Indomalaya and Australia.