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Cleome
Also called Spider Flower, Spider Flowers, Spindlepods, Beeplant
Cleome is a genus of about 170 to 275 annual or perennial herbs and shrubs, known as spider flowers, grown mainly for their showy spidery blooms; the most commonly cultivated ornamental member is Cleome hassleriana, and Cleome gynandra is grown as a vegetable. Full sun and warm weather are the key to growing them well.
Cleome is a genus of flowering plants in the family Cleomaceae, commonly known as spider flowers, spider plants, spider weeds, or bee plants. Previously, it had been placed in the family Capparaceae, until DNA studies found the Cleomaceae genera to be more closely related to the Brassicaceae than the Capparaceae. Cleome and clammyweed (Polanisia dodecandra) can sometimes be confused.
The genus sensu stricto includes about 170 species of herbaceous annual or perennial plants and shrubs. The genus has a subcosmopolitan distribution throughout the tropical and warm temperate regions of the world. However, a recent DNA study failed to separate Cleome, Podandrogyne, and Polanisia from each other, so some taxonomists have abandoned the last two of these genera, treating them as part of Cleome sensu lato; in this case, Cleome contains about 275 species, the vast majority of the Cleomaceae.
Cleome gynandra is used as a vegetable crop. C. houtteana is a commonly cultivated ornamental plant with purple, pink, or white flowers.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Cleome by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
