wondertree

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wondertree
Miracle tree (Ricinus communis), below the male (“staminate”) flowers that are just opening

Miracle tree ( Ricinus communis ), below the male (“staminate”) flowers that are just opening

Systematics
Order : Malpighiales (Malpighiales)
Family : Spurge Family (Euphorbiaceae)
Subfamily : Acalyphoideae
Tribe : Acalypheae
Genre : Ricinus
Type : wondertree
Scientific name of the  genus
Ricinus
L.
Scientific name of the  species
Ricinus communis
L.

The miracle tree or castor bean ( Ricinus communis ) is the only plant species of the family of Euphorbiaceae belonging (Euphorbiaceae) monotypic genus Ricinus . He is poisonous plant of the year 2018.

description

Castor leaves
Cotyledons of Ricinus communis

In the temperate climate zones the plant grows as an annual herbaceous plant , in the tropics as a perennial plant . The plant is fast-growing and under ideal conditions can reach heights of up to 6 meters within three to four months. In a tropical climate it reaches heights of over 10 meters after several years and forms a lignified trunk. In seasonal climates, the plant dies above ground every year and then sprouts again when exposed to appropriate sunlight.

The alternate standing leaves are 30 to 70 cm tall, dark green (some varieties reddish to purple) and they have very long, often reddish petioles . They are hand-shaped split with five to eleven pointed, egg-shaped lobes, they are closer to the leaf base, shield-shaped on the stems. The leaf margin is serrated with glandular, unevenly large tips. The underside of the leaf is glandular. The middle nerves of the nerve are partly reddish. The stems , which contain a lot of water, are also red in some varieties. There are small, sloping, stem-encompassing and triangular stipules . There are extra-floral nectaries on the leaf and bract base , on the leaf margins of the stipules and on petioles.

The wonder tree blooms from August to October. Large, about 30-40 cm long, terminal racemose or panicle inflorescences are formed. The plants are monoecious mixed-sex ( monoecious ). The fragrant, short-stalked and unisexual flowers are inconspicuous and without petals (apetal). The egg-shaped, green-reddish sepals of the female flowers fall off early, those of the male are egg-shaped, green-yellowish and durable. In the upper half of the inflorescence only the female flowers, recognizable by the red and two-branched, strongly papillary stigmas , are formed, in the lower half only the male flowers, with their over 100 typical and richly branched, basal overgrown, bundled and whitish flowers to light yellow stamens . The upper and triple ovary is prickly, with three very short pistils .

There are brownish, dense to sparsely covered with soft, about 5 mm long spines, triple and about 1.5-2.5 cm large fissure fruits (Regma), whose partial fruits (Cocci) are on a wider, short carpophor (Columna) , educated. They are similar to the chestnut fruits , but are more softly prickly, sometimes the slightly fleshy exocarp separates from the woody mesocarp. The flattened, reddish brown to silvery, grayish and marbled, ellipsoidal and bean-shaped, about 7-14 mm long and wide and 6-8 mm thick seeds are shiny, with a small two-part caruncula , which often falls off later. The seed coat is thin, hard and brittle and easy to remove, the tegmen is very thin and papery, membranous, the endosperm is large and surrounds the flat cotyledons . The thousand grain mass averages around 200-450 grams.

The caruncula is used for the secondary seed dispersal by ants ( myrmecochory ), according to the autochory . They eat the caruncula and then deposit the seeds somewhere.

The plant is termite and drought resistant.

The number of chromosomes is 2n = 20.

distribution

This plant species is native to northeast Africa and the Middle East . As a cultural refugee , it has now spread to all tropical zones. The species loves a sunny, warm and windless place. The soil should be rich in humus and nutrients and well drained. A good water supply promotes growth, but is no longer mandatory after good growth, because the plant tolerates drought.

Castor Seeds

Names

The botanical name comes from the Latin word ricinus for "louse, vermin", as the shape of the seeds of the plant is reminiscent of ticks that have been swallowed. Other German trivial names are Christ Palme , dog harness , lice tree , cross tree , or the generic name generalize, castor . The name miracle tree is based on the biblical story, according to which the plant for the protection of the prophet Jonah in Nineveh grew into a tree in one night, i.e. it grew very quickly in a miraculous way.

In connection with the use of the oil of the seeds of the castor bean by the industry and in the media as is castor plant (English Castor Oil Plant ), respectively. The seeds of the plant have long been known in German as castor beans . For the derivation of the name "Castor" see the article on castor oil .

ingredients

castor oil

The highly viscous, transparent to yellowish castor oil (also castor oil, pharmaceutical name: Ricini oleum , formerly: Oleum Ricini s. Castoris , also Ricinus Communis Seed Oil , on cosmetics (after English) castor oil ) is made from the seeds of the plant (oil content from about 40 to 55%) cold-pressed, it consists of over 75% triglycerides, which are esterified with ricinoleic acid. Unlike the seeds, it is non-toxic. The castor oil is used for many different applications in medicine, cosmetics and technology.

Ricin

The seed pods of the miracle tree are only slightly poisonous. The endosperm of the seeds is highly poisonous because it contains the toxic protein ricin , a lectin . The rizine content in the seeds of the wonder tree is around 1 to 5% of the protein content. When taking ricin, an amount of 0.3–20 milligrams per kilogram of body weight can be fatal, which corresponds to a few seeds. The parenterally lethal dose in mice is around one microgram per kilogram of body weight, depending on the purity of the substance. Ricin dissolves in water, but it is insoluble in fat and therefore not contained in castor oil. When the seeds are pressed, the poison remains in the press residue.

Ricin is one of the most potent naturally occurring poisons of all and also very easy to manufacture.

Untreated death occurs through circulatory failure about 48 hours after poisoning. An agglutinating protein causes the red blood cells to clump together. There is no known antidote . A comprehensive overview of cases of poisoning in humans and animals was published in 2011 and is freely available as a PDF version.

Other ingredients

Alkaloids present in the wonder tree are nudiflorine , ricinidine and ricinine .

The (young) leaves and the seed coat are poisonous for animals.

use

Use as an ornamental plant

Castor Fruit

The miracle tree is a popular ornamental plant , especially as it is fast-growing and has an exotic appearance. In moderate latitudes, however, the frost-sensitive plant does not survive the winter and is therefore usually only cultivated as an annual. The ideal location in the garden is a hotbed or any other not too shady place.

Several varieties have been bred, mostly for commercial oil production. However, some varieties were also bred for the ornamental plant trade: "Carmencita" with bronze-red leaves and bright red flowers; "Impala", a miniature variety with red to purple leaves; "Sanguineus" with blood-red trunk and foliage; "Gibsonii Mirabilis", a dwarf variety in dark red and "Zanzibarensis" with white-veined, green leaves.

Bible

In many German translations of the Old Testament of the Bible , castor oil is mentioned in the book of Jonah , Chapter 4, in verses 6 to 8: “God let the castor bush grow over Jonah to provide shade for his head. The next morning, however, he sent a worm so that the castor oil withered. ”( Jona 4,6  EU ) Since the plant only occurs at this point in the Hebrew original, its meaning is not entirely clear. The most important ancient Greek translation, the Septuagint , and the oldest Latin translation, the Vetus Latina , gave the translation of pumpkin and the Vulgate ivy . In the Vatican, a fresco by Michelangelo shows Jonah with a fish and bottle gourd in the background. Most translators nowadays assume that they mean castor oil.

Since the plant is poisonous, it was doubted that it could have been attacked by a worm, as in Jonah's story. But every plant, no matter how poisonous, has at least one predator, and today a caterpillar is known to attack castor oil. The nature of the "worm" remained completely unclear for a long time. It is believed that these are the caterpillars of a moth of the bear moth family (Arctiidae), which was newly described in 2005 and was given the name Olepa schleini . These caterpillars feed on castor oil and are primarily nocturnal.

literature

  • Guido Majno: The Healing Hand. Man and Wound in the Ancient World. Harvard University Press, Cambridge / Mass. 1975, ISBN 0-674-38330-3 .
  • Heinrich Marzell : Dictionary of German plant names. Volume 3: Macleya – Ruta. Parkland, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-88059-982-3 . (Reprinted from 1977 edition).
  • Axel Hausmann: Olepa schleini, rediscovery of a biblical butterfly from the book of Jona. In: Animals and Art from Israel. (= Reports of the Friends of the ZSM. Volume 2), Munich 2005, ISBN 3-00-017303-X .
  • Ricinus communis in the Flora of North America, Vol. 12.
  • Ricinus communis in the Flora of China, Vol. 11.
  • PC van Welzen: Revisions and phylogenies of Malesian Euphorbiaceae: Subtribe Lasiococcinae (Homonoia, Lasiococca, Spathiostemon) and Clonostylis, Ricinus, and Wetria. In: Blumea. 43, 1988, pp. 131–164, online at nationaalherbarium.nl, accessed on May 29, 2018.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Poison Plant of the Year 2018. Wandsbek Botanical Special Garden, accessed on December 22, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Josef Möller , C. Griebel: Microscopy of food and beverages from the plant kingdom. Third edition, Springer, 1928, ISBN 978-3-642-50430-3 (reprint), p. 175 f.
  3. ↑ Ricinus communis at Kew Seed Information Database, accessed May 29, 2018.
  4. ^ VF Martins et al .: Secondary Seed Dispersal by Ants of Ricinus communis. In: Sociobiology. Vol. 47, no. 1, 2006 online (PDF), at Guimarães Lab, accessed May 30, 2018.
  5. ↑ a b Ricinus communis (PDF), on worldagroforestry.org, accessed on May 29, 2018.
  6. ^ Erich Oberdorfer : Plant-sociological excursion flora for Germany and neighboring areas. 8th edition, Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8001-3131-5 , p. 633.
  7. ↑ B. Soto-Blanco, IL Sinhorini, SL Gorniak, B. Schumaher-Henrique: Ricinus communis cake poisoning in a dog. In: Vet. Hum. Toxicol. 44 (3), 2002, pp. 155-156.
  8. ↑ Lexicon of Biochemistry: Ricin , accessed on July 27, 2011.
  9. ↑ Manfred Schmitt, Raffael Schaffrath: Microbial Protein Toxins. Springer, 2005, ISBN 3-540-23562-0 , p. 218.
  10. ^ J. Audi, M. Belson, M. Patel, J. Schier, J. Osterloh: Ricin poisoning: a comprehensive review . In: JAMA . tape 294 , no. November 18 , 2005, pp. 2342-2351 , doi : 10.1001 / jama.294.18.2342 , PMID 16278363 .
  11. ^ S. Worbs, K. Köhler, D. Pauly et al .: Ricinus communis intoxications in human and veterinary medicine - a summary of real cases. In: Toxins . 3 (10), 2011, pp. 1332-1372, Review, PMID 22069699 .
  12. ↑ Peter Weimar: Herder's theological commentary on the Old Testament; HThKAT. (under Jona), Freiburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-451-26848-9 , pp. 417-419.
  13. ↑ Axel Hausmann: Olepa Schleini: Rediscovery of a biblical butterfly from the book of Jona. In: Animals and Art from Israel. (= Reports of the Friends of the ZSM. Volume 2), Munich 2005, ISBN 3-00-017303-X , pp. 22-25. (PDF)

Web links

Commons : Wonder Tree ( Ricinus communis )  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on July 20, 2006 .