Squirting Cucumber: The Plant That Explodes

[Music] this plant is explosive it uses its seed firing machine gun to colonize huge empires and it has a poisonous fruit that can damage your soft tissue this plant is ready to go to war it's the squirting cucumber [Music] hey i'm tasha the amazon and you're watching floor logic today we're talking about one of the most inappropriate sounding plants in the world the squirting cucumber at first sight ecmallium alutarium commonly known as the squirting or exploding cucumber looks like your average flowering plant this mediterranean cutie is part of the gourd family along with proud favorites like watermelons pumpkins and of course cucumbers can we pause for a moment to think about the fact that watermelons and cucumbers are both gourds [Music] the squirting cucumber has pretty little yellow flowers and fuzzy fruits that vaguely resemble its edible namesake other members of its family rely on animals to eat those fruits and disperse the seeds through their feces but squirting cucumbers take a slightly different approach they spread their seeds using one of the most dramatic dispersal methods in the world they explode it's called blackery and it works like this the squirting cucumber's fruits have very soft cells that accumulate water to produce osmotic pressures of up to 27 atmospheres that's about the same amount of pressure you'd feel if you were to dive 260 meters underwater if the fruit is shaken and separated from its stock it sets off a chain reaction that makes the cells expand and shoot out the seeds this is the famous squirt and it makes the seeds fly up to six meters away from the plant okay let's see that again this time in slow motion you can see that the moment the fruit falls off it just starts firing at the base of the fruit there's a hole where it broke off from the stem that's where the seeds and the fluids shoot out [Music] there even seems to be a bit of recoil every time it shoots it's really a sea gatling gun like the gatling p zombies beware the only drawback is that it depends on water to build up pressure so in dry conditions their ability to shoot out seeds is decreased if all the seeds fall too close to the parent they might end up competing for resources every fruit can hold up to 60 seeds so just one explosion can start a small colony this form of seed dispersal is rare but effective and is used by several plants around the world this strategy has evolved independently in several plant families some other examples are the dynamite tree whose exploding fruits can be heard from a distance the himalayan balsam whose seed pods explode spontaneously when they're mature and witch hazel which has a squeezing mechanism that can shoot seeds out at 45 kilometers an hour in the squirting cucumbers case this seed dispersal method has helped them colonize a huge mass of land from central asia to the british isles if you're one of the hundreds of millions of people that live in an area where these guys have squirted their seeds you might be able to watch the show up close your best bet is to look for them in rocky or sandy ground near bodies of water they've also been observed at garbage dumps and construction sites they flower in the summer and fruits are at the largest in the fall historically they were used in folk medicine but more recently their usage has decreased and their effectiveness has been questioned there have been records of people using this plant for thousands of years going back as far as the ancient assyrians their roots and fruits have been used to make different concoctions that were supposed to combat pain inflammation cirrhosis hemorrhoids and constipation a study from the year 2000 showed that undiluted squirting cucumber juice causes irritation and inflammation of mucous membranes some of the symptoms are vomiting pink eye and inability to swallow so please even though they might look like a natural version of pop rocks do not put these guys anywhere near your mouth they're literally poison so what should i talk about next let me know in the comments and don't forget to subscribe for new episodes every week thanks for watching see ya [Music] you

Channel: Animalogic

Views: 1,736,883

Keywords: animals, animal, logic, education, animalogic, crazy, ugly, weird, gross, beautiful, interesting, facts, about, information, info, school, research, learn, learning, smart, 4k, nature documentary, nature doc, floralogic, second nature, Seeds, seed dispersal, himalayan balsam, dandelion, squirting cucumber, mechanics, high pressure, slow motion, super slow motion, exploding cucumber, witch hazel, explosion, squirt, exploding plant, explosion plant, baseball plant, rocket plant, machine gun plant

Id: LLBg0In8Dtw

Length: 5min 17sec (317 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/GravitationalWaves5]

I'm starting to understand plant auras. I just had to find my spirit plant. That's sweet 💚