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" (ornithopodi + oides).[1][2]
Cleome ornithopodioides is an annual plant growing to a height of .3 m.[3]
Flowers possess both male and female reproductive organs.[3]
The first samples of bird spiderflower to arrive in Europe came from explorations of the area called 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]
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]
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]
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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" (ornithopodi + oides).
