Tag: Capparis decidua

Bare caper

North of the great Rann of Kutch, in the center of the Thar desert, one of the daily staples for dinners are made from the branches and berries of kair. “Common names” used by amateur nature watchers are odd. In the anglophone world there is an attempt to systematize descriptive names in English, whether or not a plant or bird exists in the geography where the English commonly come across it. So the “common name” given to kair ignores the Hindi word altogether, or the Gujarati cognate kerdo, and translates the Latin binomial to get bare caper. The same plant also grows in the Arab desert and arid parts of east Africa, where, no doubt, it has other common names. I can live with using the Latin binomial as a trans-cultural name, since the system recognizes the inventors of modern systematics. So, I’ll give up on the silly name bare caper, and call the plant Capparis decidua or kair.

I’d first met the plant served up on a plate in Jodhpur, then seen it in the Rao-Jodha Desert Park in that town. After that I’ve seen it in many places in the Thar desert. But this was the first time I’d come across it in the flowering season, just after the monsoon. The plant is a climber, but when it grows alone in the desert or a clearing in a forest it looks like a bushy man-high tangle of branches. As you can see, a stalk in the bush above has adapted to circumstances by becoming thicker and growing vertically.

The capers (family Capparis) are found in Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe, and also in north, central and south Americas. This indicates a truly ancient genesis. Molecular evidence shows an old split between the old world and new world groups of this family. The old world (including Australian) species seem to originate from Africa.

The succulent is mostly leafless. Small leaves can be seen sometimes on young branches. This time around I didn’t see any. The paired thorns are pretty well spaced on the stalks, and do not discourage human manipulation. I suppose they are still sufficient to deter browsing. The red flowers seemed to grow in bunches of three, or, rarely, in singles. I suppose they will turn into the red berries in a couple of weeks, and ripen into black in a month. Someone mentioned an achar made of the berries. We found one in a shop in Bhuj, and brought it home.

The next day I found kair vines used by farmers to make hedges around their fields. They grow dense, support other vines, deter cattle from feeding in the fields, and can be harvested for food when needed. The Sanskrit words for the plant include nishpatrika, meaning without leaves, and tamprapatraka, which could refer to the yellow colour of the leaves. But quite as interesting are alternate names like granthika and granthila. Could the reference to books mean that you can obtain a fibre from it which can be used to make paper? Extracts from the plant seem to have the potential for several pharmacological uses. What a wonderful plant!

Desert Hyacinth

I stumbled down the slip-face of a sand dune and heard Adesh call out to look to my right. There, poking out of the sand was a colourful spike: red with yellow flowers. “That’s a root parasite”, Adesh told me. Indeed it was a parasite, there was no green anywhere on it, so it could not possibly be synthesizing its own food. Since it was standing far from any visible plant, I was willing to take Adesh at his word. Later, when I read about the parasitic plant, the Desert Hyacinth or Cistanche tubulosa, I found that it is widespread, growing as far away as the Taklamakan and parts of the Arabian desert. It is said that the seeds are extremely hardy, and can remain alive for years, being triggered into growth when some root wanders nearby.

What was this one parasitizing? Looking around I could see only one tree nearby. You can see it in the photo above, behind the Desert Hyacinth. This is the ubiquitous Capparis decidua, the tree called ker. This bears the sour berry which is one of the ingredients of the desert food called ker sangri. The tree is highly branched. The branches are green, and there are seldom any leaves. I’d been very excited to spot a leaf emerging from a split in a stem earlier in the day. You can see that in the photo alongside. In any case, this was very likely to be the tree that the parasite was feeding upon. It makes sense that the roots of the ker tree range far in search of water, and therefore are vulnerable to parasites.

It seems that the Desert Hyacinth is used in traditional Chinese medicine as a cure for erectile dysfunction. I guess any upright and unbranched plant looks like it could be a cure for such matters. Since they are often in the mind, the “cure” could even work in a significant number of cases. A quick look at Google Scholar shows that several chemicals extracted from this parasite have interesting possible effects: from protecting the liver, slowing the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, to helping with diabetes.

Adesh pointed out another interesting thing which you can see in the featured photo: there is the track of a beetle which circles the parasitic plant before burrowing into the sand at the base of the flowering stalk. It was clearly after food. I wonder whether it was the host or the parasite which would become the beetle’s food. When you look closely, the desert is alive.