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A COMMON POISONOUS PLANT

 


Many plants are poisonous, and this is an encounter with one of them. I came across a bunch of 
attractive plants with reddish and green leaves with small red flowers. They were each a foot 
high and were seemingly wild plants. Enquiries from the locals were totally without any result. All 
said it was a wild plant, and of no great use. It looked very nice, and I had no hesitation in 
transplanting them into a row in my small garden. They produced small, round, and green fruit, 
which I left alone. The as yet unidentified plant needed very little maintenance, other than 
periodic watering. It continued to grow and is now about 3 feet high and akin to a bush. A clue 
about the nature of the plant was that the birds left its fruit untouched. 
 
A friend who is a retired professor of botany promptly identified it as the castor plant, known as 
Ricinus communis. The castor beans or seeds that it produces are the source of castor oil. This 
brought back memories of my childhood, where regular dosing with castor oil was carried out 
periodically to treat or prevent constipation! Indeed, in Ayurvedic and Unani medical systems, 
castor oil is used for this purpose, even though the taste is horrid, and no amount of sugar, 
given in a spoon after ingestion of the oil, would easily take away the oily taste. So, how did the plant become toxic? It is the presence of Ricin in the seeds of the plant; the consumption of 4 to 8 raw castor seeds may suffice to cause poisoning. The seeds are present in the fruit, which, when chewed, liberate the seeds. 

Agatha Christie wrote about the poison from the castor oil plant - in her 1929 mystery called The 
House of Lurking Death, an heir and an heiress die when they consume ricin admixed with fig 
paste. In 1979, a case occurred in true James Bond style. This was the case of Georgi Markov, 
a Bulgarian diplomat posted in London, who was shot in his leg by a gun that was fitted into an 
umbrella, with a bullet that contained Ricin. The poor man died in agony three days later. 
Castor oil was known to the ancient Egyptians, for its seeds have been found in Egyptian tombs 
that go back to 4,000 BCE. The practitioners of Ayurveda have been using castor oil in 
medicines since 2,000 BCE in India. Even today, castor oil is applied to the body as a skin 
ointment, for it has healing benefits, particularly in treating wounds. Taken internally, it is a 
laxative. It is supposed to promote the growth of hair and find a niche in the hair oil industry. 
Apart from its medicinal uses, castor oil is used as a lubricant (remember Castrol) and has 
numerous uses in industry. 

The castor oil plant, Ricinus communis, is strikingly beautiful and a member of the 
Euphorbiaceae family. The foliage is superb, from mottled green to shades of yellow and 
burgundy. There are many cultivars, some that rapidly grow to 8 feet and above. The variety, 
Ricinus communis var gibsonii, grows to a height of 5 feet. Leaves are described as palmate, 
and while they can grow to 30 inches across, they remain small in some cultivars. 

REFERENCES 
1. Guinness World Records. London, UK. 2017. 
2. Cuttings; The castor bean plant: so striking, so poisonous - The New York Times. 
www.nytimes.com, 11 Sept 1994.


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