Thursday, August 07, 2008

Red and beautiful and deadly...

The seed coats of the Castor oil plant are deadly poisonous - but this seems to be know very well so accidents are rare

"Ricinus communis" (Euphorbiaceae)
castor oil plant, Rizinus

3 comments:

  1. hi Petra..
    I've never seen this flower before..
    it's certainly beautiful and reminds me of our national flower ..the waratah :)

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  2. Hi Kim, thank you for visiting again :)
    It's actually not the flower any more but the seed - the blossoms themselves are those tiny little things beneath those red "balls" which you can see on one of the photos.
    I just looked it up - the waratah - that's really a beautiful exotic bloom and I can see some similarities!

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  3. What a lovely flower...I've never seen anything quit like this...all spiky!!

    Cheers

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