Castor Bean

Description:

Flowers occur most of the year in dense terminal clusters (inflorescences), with female flowers just above the male flowers. This species is clearly monoecious, with separate male and female flowers on the same individual. There are no petals and each female flower consists of a little spiny ovary (which develops into the fruit or seed capsule), and a bright red structure with feathery branches (stigma lobes) that receives pollen from male flowers. Each male flower consists of a cluster of many stamens which literally smoke as they shed pollen in a gust of wind.

Habitat:

Although it is native to the Ethiopian region of tropical east Africa, the castor bean or castor plant (Ricinus communis) has become naturalized in tropical and warm temperate regions throughout the world, and is becoming an increasingly abundant weed in the southwestern United States. This plant was near a ditch in a weedy field

Notes:

Above info from: http://waynesword.palomar.edu/plmar99.ht...