Ecballium Elaterium also Known as the Squirting Cucumber or Exploding Cucumber
SQUIRTING CUCUMBER
Although squirting cucumber seed is rarely on sale, the plant is far too amusing to ignore. Seed merchants, take note! Otherwise, you will have to collect it yourself if holidaying in a hot area, where squirting cucumbers grow like weeds in sunny, open spots and on dung-heaps. Make sure you are wearing old clothes and sunglasses - contact lenses are unsuitable - before you begin to collect them. Approach the plant cautiously and look out for one of the gherkin-like fruits with a yellowed stalk. Hold a small bag next to the stalk, with its open end facing the fruit. Use your other hand to push the fruit upwards. It will break off the stalk and squirt a jet of yellow fluid -containing the fruit - into the bag. Dry the seed and sow it directly in the garden the following spring. The low-growing plants need a warm position. The female flowers produce fruit about 1V2 in long. As soon as they are ripe, you can play a sticky trick on someone - mind people’s eyes, though.
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.
