Caballero
Caesalpinia pulcherrima · Peacock flower
- Names in the book
- Flores y Rosas Caballero, Caballero, Sp.-Fil.; Barbadoes Flower-Fence, Eng.
- Colours
- flowerred, orange, yellow
- Native range
- Tropical Americas
- In the Philippines, per the book
- Very common in gardens where it is cultivated for its beautiful flowers. Blooms throughout the entire year.
- Family
- Fabaceae, filed in the book under Leguminosæ
- Printed as
- Cæsalpinia pulcherrima, Swartz. (Poinciana pulcherrima, L. & Blanco.)
- Sources
- Page 98 on Project Gutenberg · Wikipedia
The plant today
Caesalpinia pulcherrima is a species of flowering plant in the pea family Fabaceae, native to the tropics and subtropics of the Americas. It could be native to Central America, but its exact origin is unknown due to widespread cultivation. Common names for this species include poinciana, peacock flower, red bird of paradise, Mexican bird of paradise, dwarf poinciana, pride of Barbados, flos pavonis, and flamboyant-de-jardin.
Excerpt from “Caesalpinia pulcherrima” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Recorded in the Philippines
GBIF holds 464 records of this plant from the Philippines. The ones with map coordinates fall in 36 provinces, most often Metropolitan Manila (176), Rizal (28), Davao del Sur (23), Cebu (19), Davao Oriental (18), Bohol (13), Laguna (12), Batangas (11), and 28 more.
Counts from GBIF occurrence records, October 2026. They include planted trees and garden plants, and a province with no records may only lack collectors.
What the 1901 book says
A historical record, quoted as printed. Doses and remedies here are not medical advice.
Uses
The leaves are emmenagogue, purgative like those of senna, and excitant. The bark especially is a powerful emmenagogue, used in some countries for criminal purposes. The decoction of the flowers is pectoral and febrifuge and is given in bronchitis, asthma and malarial fever. The flowers contain a bitter principle. The roots are acrid and poisonous. The seeds of the green fruit are eaten frequently by children; when ripe they contain gallic and tannic acids, by virtue of which they are used in tanning hides and to dye yellow combined with alum, and black combined with salts of iron. They also contain a pigment and a resin.
Infusion of the Flowers.—
[table omitted; see the source text]
Mix. Dose, a wineglassful several times a day.
Botanical description
A shrub, with prickly trunk. Leaves twice abruptly pinnate. Leaflets 5–8 pairs, glabrous, ovate and elliptical, bearing a spine at the extremity, 3 stipules to each pair of leaflets. Flowers yellow and red, in racemes on the ends of the branches. Calyx divided almost to the base, with 5 concave parts. Corolla, 5 petals 1′ long with short claws, one petal very small and straight, the others larger, with wavy edges. Stamens 10, crimson, 3′ long, free, woolly, united at the lower end. Pistil the same length as the stamens. Stigma somewhat concave. Ovary sessile, unilocular, many-ovuled. Pod compressed, with 7 or more seeds inserted on the superior suture and separated from each other by fleshy divisions.
Recent research
The most cited papers since 2022 that name this plant in the title, pulled from Europe PMC in October 2026. Titles are the authors' own and the findings have not been reviewed here.
- Cassane diterpenoids from the aerial parts of Caesalpinia pulcherrima and their antibacterial and anti-glioblastoma activity
- Cassane diterpenoids from Caesalpinia pulcherrima and their anti-inflammatory and α-glycosidase inhibitory activities
- Network pharmacology-integrated molecular docking analysis of phytocompounds of Caesalpinia pulcherrima (peacock flower) as potential anti-metastatic agents