Squirting Cucumber

I have not been writing much lately, but this discovery screamed to be documented. This was one of those days of experimenting. I started out with Fae because I am wearing green, but Fae definitely goes off the list of favorites. She smells of anise. Then I wore Bayou over Fae and I liked Bayou more than the first time I wore it. But after I washed the henna out of my hair and all the previous scents from my skin in the process I searched for something else to wear. Still in the experimental mood I picked up the box with scents I still have to try or wish to retry and there I found some old ones from the box of very first scents. I had forgotten that I put them there when I went through all my boxes in search of scents my son might like. On top were The Caterpillar and Squirting Cucumber. I sniffed first one, then the other and the cucumber decided to live up to its name and squirted itself over my fingers. And I can tell you this is quite an achievement from an almost empty imp! So it is Squirting Cucumber today.

Now I thought that this was just a silly name Black Phoenix had come up with. But I googled for pictures like I always do when I post a scent's name on facebook. And guess what? There is a plant that is called Squirting Cucumber! It is from the cucumber family and it's called Ecballium elaterium. The name squirting cucumber it got from the fact that ripe fruits squirt a stream of mucilaginous liquid contaning the seeds. Don't try to eat the gooey fruits, they are poisonous, even more than the rest of the plant is. In the ancient world they were considered to induce abortion. Although the caterpillars of a small moth seem to be able to live on it, but they otherwise eat white bryony which is also quite poisonous.

The fact that there was a plant called squirting cucumber wasn't the only exciting thing I discovered. I also discovered that I had actually seen the plant and discovered that its fruits squirted goo when I was in Andalusia in 2005. The plants grew in abundance on an area at the end of the camping in Vejer where we stayed, a wonderful camping by the way, where I also saw my first pomegranate trees. Also lemon trees and orange trees but they weren't quite as exciting as the pomegranates. The squirting cucumber plants that I saw there looked exactly like this picture: