Peacock Flower - Caesalpinia pulcherrima

One of the most striking plants I saw during my recent vacation in Costa Rica was the Peacock Flower - Caesalpinia pulcherrima, a member of the legume family (Fabaceae).

This legume shrub hides an interesting past behind its exotic flowers. The seeds from this plant have been used as an abortifacient, meaning that it promotes abortion: see The History of Abortifacients, By Stassa Edwards (2014).

Maria Sibylla Merian, a 17th-century artist and naturalist, encountered this plant in the Dutch colony of Surinam. In her work, Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium (Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam, 1705), Merian recorded that African slaves and native Indian populations used the peacock flower as an abortifacient in their practice of traditional medicine. She wrote:

The Indians, who are not treated well by their Dutch masters, use the seeds [of this plant] to abort their children, so that their children will not become slaves like they are. The black slaves from Guinea and Angola have demanded to be well treated, threatening to refuse to have children. They told me this themselves.

To read more about abortifacients and their past uses, I can recommend the following scholarly article:

Exotic abortifacients and lost knowledge, By Londa Schiebinger (2008)

The photographs above were taken in October, 2022, at the Tulemar resort on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica with a RICOH WG-50 camera.