Squirting cucumber
Ecballium elaterium
Family · Cucurbitaceae · Poisonous
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
The hairy creeping gourd of southern verges, whose fruit detaches from the stalk and shoots its seeds out in a jet several metres. It is one of the most entertaining plants to show someone and one of the least to touch.
Roadsides and waste ground · Town and roadside · Fields and pasture · Walls and rocks
Also known asexploding cucumber
How to tell it
A sprawling plant with no tendrils at all, covered in rough hairs, with large grey-green heart-shaped leaves. Green hairy fruits the size of a walnut, hanging on a thick stalk. Touch a ripe fruit and it fires.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None. The juice is a violent purgative and was used as such in ancient medicine, with recorded deaths. The seed jet reaches the eyes easily and causes chemical conjunctivitis: if it happens, rinse with plenty of water and go to an emergency room.