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Ecballium elaterium
Spotted this fascinating plant at the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens Crops of the World Garden. The docent made one of the cucumbers "squirt" and it was quite explosive and startled me a bit! You can see the seeds on top of some of the leaves in the first photo.
UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens Crops of the World Garden, Berkeley, CA.
From Wikipedia: Ecballium elaterium, also called the squirting cucumber or exploding cucumber, is a plant in the cucumber family. It gets its unusual name from the fact that, when ripe, it squirts a stream of mucilaginous liquid containing its seeds, which can be seen with the naked eye. It is thus considered to have rapid plant movement. It is native to Europe, northern Africa, and temperate areas of Asia. It is grown as an ornamental plant elsewhere, and in some places it has naturalized.It is suspected to provide food for the caterpillars of the tortrix moth Phtheochroa rugosana.
Spotted on Sep 18, 2011
Submitted on Sep 22, 2011
2 Comments
Cool Noe and Pili! I had never seen it before and thought it was amazing.
This plant is very common in the south of Spain ;)