Family |
Cucurbitaceae
Ecballium elaterium
(L.) A.Rich.
Ecballium elaterium (L.) A.Rich.
(First published in J.B.G.Bory de Saint-Vincent, Dict. Class. Hist. Nat. 6: 19 (1824); Nouvelle Flore du Liban et de la Syrie, vol. 3, Pl. CLXXXIV nº 2; 1983)
• Life-form & habit : Perennial herb with a thick root; stems prostrate, without tendrils, scabrid to rough, spreading over the ground.
• Leaves : Leaves thick, petiolate, 5-lobed, with sinuate-undulate margins, rough to the touch.
• Inflorescence & flowers : Flowers pale yellow, monoecious; male flowers in racemes, with 3 stamens and broad, flexuous anthers, one of them unilocular; female flowers solitary, with imperfect stamens; corolla campanulate, deeply divided into ovate-oblong acute lobes.
• Fruit : Fruit oblong-ellipsoid, covered with small spines; at maturity it detaches suddenly from the peduncle and ejects the seeds by elastic pressure. Seeds numerous, oblong.
• Phenology : Flowers almost all year.
• Habitat & elevation : Abandoned places, rubble and disturbed ground.
• Lebanese distribution : Recorded from Beirut, Tripoli, Broummana, Qrayyé, Jebaa‘ ech-Chouf, Zahlé and Ksara.
• Native range : Canary Islands, Mediterranean to South European Russia and northern Iran.
• Diagnostic remarks : Easily recognised by its prostrate, tendril-less stems, thick 5-lobed leaves and characteristic explosive fruit, which ejects the seeds when detached from the peduncle.