CAPERS are the pickled flower-buds of the caper-hush (capparis spinosa). They have in agreeable pungency of taste, with a slight bitterness, and have long been in very gen eral use as a condiment and ingredient of sauces, along with boiled mutton and other kinds of food. They possess medicinal properties, being antiscorbutic, stimulant, and laxative. They are of a grayish green color, to improve which, however, copper is some times used, as m the case of gherkins and other pickles, rendering them poisonous. This can be detdcted by thrusting a polished iron rod into the vessel which contains the C.; the surface of the rod soon becoming coated with copper, if it is present.—The caper-bush is a native of the s. of Europe, and other countries near the Mediterra nean. It is extensively cultivated in some parts of the s. of France and in Italy, but most of all in Sicily. It succeeds in the open air even at Paris, but in Britain requires the aid of artificial heat. It is a trailing. rambling shrub, loving dry places, and often growing on rocks or walls, addiug a fresh charm of beauty to many an ancient ruin. It begins to flower early in summer, and continues flowering till winter. The
buds are gathered every morning, and are immediately put into vinegar and salt: at the end of the season, they are sorted according to their size and color, the greenest and least expanded being the best, and are again put into vinegar, time finest being sent to the market in bottles, the coarser in small barrels. The fruit, which is a small berry, is also pickled in the s. of Italy. The flower-buds of the caper of Mount Sinai (cappa ris Sinaica) are pickled like those of the common species; the seeds are also pickled, and are called by a name signifying mountain pepper. The fruit of capparis aphylla is made into a pickle in India. Species of capparis are numerous in India, the warm parts of America, etc. See CAPPARIDE,E.—Various substitutes for C. are sometimes used, as the flower-buds of the marsh marigold (caltha palustris), those of the Indian cress (tropccolum majus), and those of the bean caper (zygophyllum fabago).