2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Mad cucumber (lat. Ecballium) - a monotypic genus, consisting of a single species of herb with the name "Mad cucumber" (lat. Ecballium elaterium), ranked by botanists in the pumpkin family (lat. Cucurbitaceae). Despite the word "cucumber" in the name of the plant, its fruits are not served on the table. This does not prevent the plant from being useful to humans, since its roots, stems, leaves and flowers contain healing substances that have a number of medicinal properties.
What's in your name
The Latin name of the genus "Ecballium" is based on the ancient Greek word meaning "throw away." The genus owes this name to the fruits of its only species, which, after full ripening, crack, throwing seeds out into the world in order to prolong their presence on this amazing and beautiful planet.
Favorite growing places
Crazy cucumber, depending on the surrounding climatic conditions, can be a perennial or annual plant. Being a native of the warm places of the Mediterranean, where it can be found on the seashore; on the sides of country roads, clinging tenaciously to rural hedges; in garbage dumps, it has been growing in one place for years, stubbornly winning living space from other plants.
Being a hardy plant, it perfectly takes root in areas with a temperate climate, in which it sacrifices its aboveground part for the winter, easily and quickly restoring its brisk shoots in the spring and creating impenetrable thickets along the river banks during the summer. Making its way into man-made gardens, Crazy Cucumber turns into an annoying weed, if given free rein.
Description
The thickened fleshy core of the plant firmly deepens into the soil, overgrown with a rare network of adventitious roots. An ascending or outstretched stem is born from the root to the surface of the earth, the length of which varies from half a meter to one and a half meters. Lacking the tendrils typical of climbing plants, Crazy Cucumber has learned to cling to the support that has turned up with the rough surface of its stem.
Relatively long (up to fifteen centimeters) fleshy petioles connect the stem with large heart-ovoid leaves. The leaf plate is pierced with thickened veins and has a rough, rigid wrinkled surface and a felt underside. The edge of the leaf is decorated with crenate denticles.
From the axils of leaves on long peduncles, inflorescences-brushes appear in the world. Moreover, female single flowers appear on one peduncle, and male flowers with stamens on the other, emerging from the same leaf axils. The structure of a flower has a complete set of elements. At the base of the flower lies a bell-shaped calyx, composed of five short sepals. On it is a bell-shaped corolla of five pale yellow petals with green longitudinal veins, merging at the base into a green core.
If by their shape the fruits of the plant are similar to small cucumbers, then by their external bristly appearance they really are more like "mad cucumbers". Although they are called "rabid" not for their appearance, but for their ability to explode when ripe, scattering dark brown small seeds within a radius of six meters around the mother plant.
Healing abilities
The roots and herb of Crazy Cucumber during the flowering period of the plant, as well as the fruits of the plant, have healing abilities.
Chemical constituents of plant tissues, such as alkaloids, steroids, carotenoids, nitrogen-containing compounds, organic and fatty acids, vitamin "C" and others, determine the healing abilities of Crazy Cucumber.
The main areas of use of medicinal raw materials are diseases of the kidneys, liver, intestines, nervous system, skin diseases, various inflammations, as well as malignant formations.
Carefully
When using medicinal raw materials for self-medication, it should be remembered that
the plant is poisonous, and therefore, if the dosage is incorrect, it will bring more harm to the body than good.
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