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The Learning Kingdom's Cool Fact of the Day for September 2, 1999
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What plant shoots its seeds out at high speed?
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The squirting cucumber, Ecballium elaterium, shoots its seeds from the
fruit at more than sixty miles per hour (97 km/hr). The seeds can
land thirty feet away (9 meters).
As the squirting cucumber fruit ripens, the parent vine squeezes water
into the fruit, and the pressure inside steadily increases. When the
fruit is ripe, a special end-cap suddenly pops open and a stream of
seeds and liquid shoots out explosively, spreading seeds far from the
parent plant.
The liquid portion of the ejected stream can be collected and dried
into a flaky material called elaterium, which has medicinal
properties.
More about the squirting cucumber:
http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/c/cucus124.html
Drawing that shows how the fruit squirts:
http://chili.rt66.com/hrbmoore/Illustrations/Ecballium_elaterium.gif
Another Cool Fact about seeds:
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/09/26.html
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