Capparis spinosa (Capparaceae); A Survey on Morpho-ecologic Variation for Different Populations of Iran

Capparis spinosa grows naturally from the Atlantic coast of the Canary Islands and Morocco to the Black Sea, in Crimea and Armenia, and to the east side of the Caspian Sea in Iran. Capparis species are valuable as a resource for medicine, food, improving soil fertility, stabilizing dunes, fuel, timber, and livestock feed. In this research, sixteen populations of Capparis spinosa were collected from different locations in Iran and quantitative and qualitative data of morphological characters were revised. A multivariable statistical analysis was performed for the morphological characters of Capparis populations. The populations were classified into two main groups using a Ward's hierarchical clustering method. We showed some of the climatic conditions correlate with morphological characters. Data obtained were standardized (Mean= 0, variance= 1) and used to estimate Euclidean distance for clustering and ordination analyses. PCA (Principal components analysis) was used to identify the most variable morphological characters among the studied populations. The Redundancy Analysis (RDA) was applied to the dataset of nine explanatory environmental variables (annual precipitation and temperature, number of frost days, relative humidity, potential evapotranspiration, minimum and maximum absolute temperatures, minimum temperature of the coldest month of the year, and maximum temperature of the warmest month). In the Flora of Iran and Flora Iranica C. spinosa and C. sicula are considered as synonyms, which are improved by this study