Poisonous Plants : Castor Plant

Castor plant, Ricinus communis, is a species of flowering plants in the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae. 

The name Ricinus is a Latin word for tick, for the resemblance of castor bean to certain ticks.  The specific name ‘communis’ comes from Latin word commun, which means “common”.

The  common name ‘castor oil’ comes from Latin word ‘castor’ for beaver, of which castor oil was used as replacement for castoreum, a perfume made from dried perineal glands of beavers.  Castor oil plant has another common name, palm of Christ, ‘Palma Christi’, that derived from its therapeutic oil.

Despite its name, castor bean is not a true bean.  Castor bean is the source of castor oil, as well as ricin, a lethal toxin.  Ricin is also present throughout the plant in lower concentration.

Originated from the Mediterranean Basin, castor plant is presently planted over the tropical regions.   Leading production of castor bean are : India, China and Brazil.  

Castor oil had been used since ancient time for its therapeutic value and as fuel for lamps.   It contain mostly ricinoleic acid, a prized monosaturated fatty acid.   Today, castor oil is used in food additives, flavoring, mold inhibitor, preservative, in addition to various modern drugs.  Castor oil derivatives are also used in manufacturing of soaps, lubricants, hydraulic fluids, brake fluids, paints, dyes, coatings, inks, cold resistant plastics, waxes, nylon, and perfumes.

  

Raw castor beans are however, famous for its lethal toxin ricin.  4 – 8 seeds alone can kill an adult human.  Despite this, suicides and murders involving ingestion of castor beans are unheard of in producing countries.   

If ricin is ingested, symptoms may begin within 2 – 4 hours, but may be delayed up to 36 hours.   Symptoms includes burning sensations in mouth and throat, abdominal pain, purging and bloody diarrhea.   

However, poisoning occurs only when ingested seeds are chewed.  Intact seeds may pass through digestive tract.

Commercially cold-pressed castor oil is not toxic to human in normal doses, either internally or externally.

Roadside Trees of Italy : Hazel

The hazels, Corylus  are deciduous trees and large shrubs native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere.  Hazels are place in the Betulaceae, but some botanist spit them into a separate family Corylaceae.

The fruit of the hazel is the hazelnut.

Hazel have simple rounded leaves with double-serrated margins.  There flowers are produced early in spring before the leaves.  Flowers are monoeciuos.  Fruit surrounded by involucre, with a smooth shell.  

A hazel tree are coppiced every few years.  Regenerated shoots will bear more fruits.  Hazelnuts are harvested annually in mid-autumn.  The trees will drop their nuts as well as the leaves.  The nuts are swept off the ground and separated from debris.

Corylus has 14 – 18 species :

1. Corylus americana – American hazel

2. Corylus avellana – common hazel

3. Corylus heterophylla – Asian hazel

4. Corylus yunnanensis – Yunnan hazel

5. Corylus colchica – cochican filbert

6. Corylus cornuta – beaked hazel

7. Corylus maxima – filbert

8. Corylus sieboldiana – Asian beaked hazel

9. Corylus chinensis – Chinese hazel

10. Corylus colurna – Turkish hazel

11. Corylus fargesii – Farges’ hazel

12. Corylus jacquemontii – Jacquemont’s hazel

13. Corylus wangii – Wang’s hazel

14. Corylus ferox – Himalayan hazel

15. † Corylus johnsonii

Several hybrids exist, and many more cultivars were grown.

The common hazelnut, Corylus avellana, is the most extensively grown hazel for its nuts.  Nut are also harvested from other species, but apart from the filbert, none is of significant commercial importance.

Apart from the edible seed, hazel is also a traditional material used for making wattle, withy fencing, baskets, and the frames of coracle boats.  A number of cultivars are grown as ornamental plants.

Hazelnuts are used in confectionary to make pralines, chocolate truffles and a wide range of hazelnut paste products : Austrian tortes, Ukrainian Kyiv cake ; French dacquoise ; Italian frangelico, Bicerin di Gianduiotto gianduja ; Georgian churchkhela and satsivi, etc.

The most famous Italian hazelnut products is none other than Ferrero Rocher.   Ferrero’s others famous hazelnut-based products includes : Nutella and Kinder Bueno.  Ferrero is based in Alba, a town in region of Piedmont, Italy.

Roadside Trees of Italy : Olive

 Olive, Olea europaea, which means ‘oil from/of Europe’, is an evergreen tree native to the Mediterranean region.   It is easily recognized by its silvery green oblong leaves.  Flowers are small white.  The fruit is a small drupe.

There are six natural subspecies of Olea europaea distributed over a wide range :

1. Olea europaea subsp. europaea ( Mediterranean Basin )

2. Olea europaea subsp. cuspidata ( from South Africa throughout East Africa, Arabia to South West China )

3. Olea europaea subsp. guanchica ( Canaries )

4. Olea europaea subsp. cerasiformis ( Madeira ) ( tetraploid )

5. Olea europaea subsp. maroccana ( Morocco ) ( hexaploid )

6. Olea europaea subsp. laperrinei ( Algeria, Sudan, Niger )

Though, there are thousands of cultivars of the Olea europaea.

Olive tree is very hardy.  They are drought-, disease-, and fire-resistant.  The root system is capable to regenerate even if the above-ground structure is destroyed.  It is therefore many olive trees are said to be hundred of years old.  A few were claimed to be over one or two thousand years old.

The olive tree are cultivated for olive oil, fine wood, olive leaf and the olive fruit.     Olive oil is produced by grinding olives and extracting the oil mechanically or chemically.  Italy alone, produced over 15% of world’s olive oil.   Olive leaves are used for its medicinal properties. 

Interestingly, olives are harvested by shaking the bough or the whole tree.  Net are wrap around the trunk to catch the fallen fruits.  Table olive are hand-picked.  Bruised fruits tend to be inferior quality.

Fresh olives are not palatable as they contain oleuropein, which make them bitter ; and phenolic compounds  They are cured with lye, brine or fresh water to make them more palatable.   Oleuropein is removed by soaking in fresh water or brine.  Most olives will be allowed to ferment before being packed in brine solution.  Olives can be flavoured by soaking in a marinade or pitted and stuffed.

Langkawi Geopark

Langkawi comprises a group of 99 tropical islands laying of the northwestern coast of Peninsular Malaysia.   With a geological history dating back 550 million years, the islands contain unique rock formations, which earn itself UNESCO’s Global Geopark status on June 1^st, 2007.

Formation

Langkawi was born in the Cambrian era as a broad sedimentary mound, as part of the Gondwanaland supercontinent,  at the bottom of a turbulent sea just north of the equator.  Tectonic plate movements carried the mound south to the cold Antarctic regions.  The frozen glacier crushed the limestone, sandstone and siltstone into a base of hard granite and marble.  Then, over 400 million years, it was covered by deposits of various material from sea life skeletons to glacial droppings.

During the Permian period, the plate broke away and moved northward back to the equator.  In a series of cataclysmic event accompanied by exploding volcanoes and hot lava, the plate crashed up against the East Malaysia/Indochina block, which pushed the whole block all the way to the surface to form the Malay Peninsular.  The cataclysmic events also pushed the Himalayas to the roof of the world.

Large mound of rock and limestone then form small group of islands off the coast of the Malay Peninsular.   One mount of hot magma eventually squirmed up some 800 meters to form the Gunung Raya.  At about the same time, an ancient limestone mountain rose from the sea to form Gunung Machinchang.

During the Jurassic period, the land is further carved by the erosions, chemical reactions and a series of uplifting eruptions.

Later during the last Ice Age, sea levels were pushed up and down drastically as a result of glacial melting and global cooling, forming caves full of fossils.

Langkawi Geopark

Langkawi Geopark comprises of Machinchang Cambrian Geoforest Park ( 4,274 ha ), Kilim Karst Geoforest Park (8,261 ha ), and Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest Park ( 4,354 ha ). 

The Machinchang Cambrian Geoforest Park

Machinchang Cambrian Geoforest Park hosts the oldest geological formation in Malaysia known as the Machinchang Formation ; oldest grains of sand at Teluk Datai ; oldest fossil on Pulau Jemuruk. ; and Tanjung Sabung where limestone succeeds sandstone. 

Other attractions within the park include : Telaga Tujuh waterfall,  beautiful beaches in Teluk Datai and Pantai Kok.

Kilim Karst Geoforest Park

Kilim Karst Geoforst Park features magnificent landscape of limestone pinnacles of various shape and sizes.  The northeastern region encompassing three river basins of Kilim, Air Hangat and Kisap too host magnificent landscape of mudflats, beaches, mangroves and caves.  The name ‘Langkawi’ is said to have been derived from the Brahminy Kite eagle, which is the dominant faunal species of the area.

The Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest Park

The Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest Park is made of Permian marble overthrusted by older Setul Formation limestone.    One of the most unique features of the park is the fresh water lake of Tasik Dayang Bunting, formerly a dry doline resulted from the collapse of a very large underground limestone cave.

Other geological marvels

An alien granite dropstone that is 1 billionyears old can be founding sandstone and mudstone at Pulau Tepor.  These dropstones once drifted by a glacier before it was dropped in Langkawi which was still submerge underwater.

An ancient seabed also can be found in Pulau Ular.

A cater known as Mahsuri Ring is said to be the result of the impact of a meteor .  The crater lay in the alluvium paddy field, is visible from Gunung Raya.

Momordica dioica - Kakrol

Kakrol is most probably the fruit of Momordica dioica, a liana of the gourd family, Cucurbitaceae.   Kankrol is also known as spiny gourd, teasle gourd.  

In South Asia, where kakrol is widely cultivated for consumption, it is known in many names : karela (Hindi), katwal (Gujarati), erimapasel (Malayalam), karkotaki (Sanskrit), palu-pakal (Tamil), advikakara (Telugu), bhat korola (Bengali),  etc.

A kakrol fruit is oblong, about 6cm in length and 3cm in diameter, turned yellow upon ripening, with surface covered in many small soft blunt pines. 

Kakrol fruits is bitter in taste.  They are usually peeled before cooking.  They are usually cook with curry, or hollowed, stuffed with spices and steamed, or made into pickle, etc.  

Salvinia minima - Common Salvinia

Salvinia minima is a species of aquatic, floating fern of Salviniaceae family native to South America. 

The leaves of S. minima are small and oval, ranging from 0.4 to 2.0 cm in length.  The leaves grow in sets of three, with two leaves floating on the surface and one leaf dissected, hanging underneath.  Fine white hair grow uniformly on the leaf surface.  Brown hairs present on the underside of leaves.  S. minima is rootless.

Salvinia minima is classified as an invasive species on the Global Invasive Species Database.  It can be a nuisance to recreational watercraft, have adverse affects on fish farming, rice farming, and poses a serious threat to native species and biodiversity.

  

Salvinia minima grows on the surface of still freshwater.  Although it is sterile, S. minima can reproduce quickly very quickly asexually through fragmentation.  Buds and rhizome fragments can also remain dormant for long period of time when growth is less favorable.

S. minima undergoes 3 stages of growth.  In the primary stage, the leaves will lie flat on the water surface.  In the secondary stage, the leaves multiply and curl upward.  In the tertiary stage, the leaves become more dense and almost vertical due of crowding.

S. minima can easily out-compete and inhibit the growth of native water plants.  Mats of S. minima can block sunlight from entering the water.  S. minima, which has no nutritional value, is not favoured by fish or bird species as a food source.

In order to protect native ecosystems, numerous effort have been taken to control or eradicate the growth of Salvinia minima.   Herbicides that have been used with best success include : fluridone, imazamoz, and penoxsulam.  Successful biological control agent includes Crytobagous salviniae,  the salvinia weevil native to South America ; and Samea multiplicalis, the salvinia stem-borer moth native to southern US.

FRIM Map