Guardian Nature School Team Contact Blog Project Noah Facebook Project Noah Twitter

A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife

Join Project Noah!
nature school apple icon

Project Noah Nature School visit nature school

Castor Bean

Ricinus communis

Description:

The glossy leaves are 15–45 centimetres (5.9–18 in) long, long-stalked, alternate and palmate with 5–12 deep lobes with coarsely toothed segments. In some varieties they start off dark reddish purple or bronze when young, gradually changing to a dark green, sometimes with a reddish tinge, as they mature. The leaves of some other varieties are green practically from the start, whereas in yet others a pigment masks the green colour of all the chlorophyll-bearing parts, leaves, stems and young fruit, so that they remain a dramatic purple-to-reddish-brown throughout the life of the plant. Plants with the dark leaves can be found growing next to those with green leaves, so there probably is only a single gene controlling the production of the pigment in some varieties at least.[3] The stems (and the spherical, spiny seed capsules) also vary in pigmentation. The fruit capsules of some varieties are more showy than the flowers. The green capsule dries and splits into three sections, forcibly ejecting seeds The flowers are borne in terminal panicle-like inflorescences of green or, in some varieties, shades of red monoecious flowers without petals. The male flowers are yellowish-green with prominent creamy stamens and are carried in ovoid spikes up to 15 centimetres (5.9 in) long; the female flowers, born at the tips of the spikes, have prominent red stigmas.[4] The fruit is a spiny, greenish (to reddish-purple) capsule containing large, oval, shiny, bean-like, highly poisonous seeds with variable brownish mottling. Castor seeds have a warty appendage called the caruncle, which is a type of elaiosome. The caruncle promotes the dispersal of the seed by ants (myrmecochory).

Habitat:

These were growing beside the trail overlooking the ocean at La Jolla.

Species ID Suggestions



Sign in to suggest organism ID

No Comments

joanbstanley
Spotted by
joanbstanley

San Diego, California, USA

Spotted on May 19, 2013
Submitted on May 24, 2013

Related Spottings

Castor oil plant Castor Bean Mamona Castor

Nearby Spottings

Pacific Harbor Seal California Sea Lion Brown Pelican Pride of Madeira

Reference

Noah Guardians
Noah Sponsors
join Project Noah Team

Join the Project Noah Team