Cleome ornithopodioides explained

Cleome ornithopodioides or bird spiderflower is the type species of the genus Cleome which is part of the family Cleomaceae or Brassicaceae. The species epithet means "birds-foot like" (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: ornithopodi + oides).[1] [2]

Description

Cleome ornithopodioides is an annual plant growing to a height of .3 m.[3]

Flowers possess both male and female reproductive organs.[3]

Taxonomy

The first samples of bird spiderflower to arrive in Europe came from explorations of the area called the Levant and were successfully cultivated by James Sherard in 1732.[4]

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort named the Claude Aubriet illustration of C. ornithopodioides Sinapistrum Orientale in the 1700 Institutiones rei herbariæ.[5] Being named before the 1753 Species plantarum disqualifies the name from being considered to be a synonym.[6]

When Carl Linnaeus first published this species with its current name in his 1753 Species plantarum[7] he referenced descriptions of Sinapistrum Ornithopodiisiliquis found in Johann Christian Buxbaum's herbarium Plantarum minus cognitarum centuria, that was published posthumously by Johann Georg Gmelin in 1728,[8] Johann Jacob Dillenius's 1732 Hortus Ethamensis.[9] a collection whose list was published in 1907 by George Claridge Druce[10] and also the description he wrote of Cleome ornithopodioides in his own Hortus Cliffortianus from 1737[11] and of Sinapestrum orientale triphyllum from his 1748 Hortus Upsaliensis.[12]

In 1754 when Philip Miller described the genus Sinapistrum in The Gardeners Dictionary, he described the species with English words "Three-leav'd Eastern Sinapistrum, with Birds-foot-pods" and called it by the Latin name Sinapistrum Oriental triphyllum as it had been assigned by Tournefort who had described it before him.[13]

Ecology

Native to the area of the eastern Mediterranean,[4] C. ornithopodioides was described in 1865 as living in the wild along with Trifolium stellatum in a fertile valley at the foot of Mount Serbal.[14]

Cultivation

Philip Miller wrote of the ease of cultivation of C. ornithopodioides in his 1754 The Gardeners Dictionary: "...will thrive in open Air; so the Seeds of this may be sown on a Bed of light Earth in April (late Spring), where the Plants are to remain; and will require no other Culture, but to keep them clear from Weeds: in June (early Summer) they will flower, and the Seeds will ripen in August (late Summer); and the Plants will soon after perish."[15]

References

Taxonomy

Notes and References

  1. [#DBE|Dictionary of Botanical Epithets]
  2. [#ESS|Errors of speech and of spelling]
  3. [#PFAF|Plants For A Future]
  4. [#HK|Hortus Kewensis (1812)]
  5. [#IRH|Institutiones rei herbariæ (1700)]
  6. [#IAPT|IAPT]
  7. [#SPII|Species plantarum (1753)]
  8. [#PMCC|Plantarum minus cognitarum centuria (1740)]
  9. [#HE|Hortus Ethamensis (1732) p. 359, Tab 266]
  10. [#DH|The Dillenian Herbraria (1907)]
  11. [#CH|Hortus Cliffortianus (1737)]
  12. [#HU|Hortus Upsaliensis (1748)]
  13. [#GD1754|The Gardeners Dictionary (1754)]
  14. [#JLS1867|Linnean Society (1867)]
  15. [#GD1754|The Gardeners Dictionary (1754)]

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