One of nature’s most inherently hypersexual plants, Ecballium elaterium, better known as the squirting cucumber, weaponizes its reproductive system. It turns itself into a T-shirt canon of seeds, NPR reports. However, NPR didn’t quite phrase it that way.
Three summers ago, Kiel University biomechanist Stanislav Gorb came back from Turkey with a strange gift for Ph.D. student Helen Gorges: a baggie full of small, hairy, toxic cucumbers that explode when ripe.
The squirting cucumber gets its name from its ability to build internal pressure, which causes it to violently eject its seeds at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour. The result is an absurdly effective botanical missile system: a jet of slime, a popping stem, and one seed shooting out at a time, all over in a split second.
No matter how mature you are, it will always come off as at least vaguely pornographic, and Gorges and her team at Kiel documented the chaos using high-speed videography at up to 10,000 frames per second.
This is What a Squirting Cucumber Looks Like in Action
Gorges noticed these little plant grenades angle themselves to about 52 degrees before launch, which is freakishly close to the ideal ballistic angle of 50 degrees, “the perfect ballistic angle for the perfect shooting parabola,” Gorges told NPR. This means the cucumber isn’t just tossing its kids willy-nilly; it’s aiming for optimal seed dispersal range, which was calculated to be up to almost 40 feet.
The seeds are also sticky. One dried seed can support the weight of a six-pound object, thanks to a natural adhesive that changes properties based on moisture. Scientists believe this stickiness may help seeds attach to animals or surfaces, allowing them to hitch a ride even farther from their home.
The cucumber’s use of pressurized liquid to fling seeds is practically unique in the plant world. It may hold clues for developing efficient systems in soft robotics, agriculture, and drug delivery.
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