Animalia > Arthropoda > Insecta > Psocodea > Ricinidae > Ricinus > Ricinus fringillae

Ricinus fringillae (Castor-Oil Plant)

Synonyms:

Infraspecies

Ricinus fringillae fringillae
Ricinus fringillae irascens
Ricinus fringillae subpallidus

Invasive Species

View ISSG Record: Ricinus fringillae

Attributes

Allergen Potential [1]  High
Edible [2]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [2]  Monoecious
Hazards [2]  The whole plant is very poisonous; The seedcoat contains an extremely lethal poison that was once used by the KGB to dispose of their enemies; The leaves are only mildly poisonous; The toxic principle is water-soluble so is not found in the oil;
Leaf Type [2]  Evergreen
Lifespan [3]  Annual/Perennial
Pollinators [2]  Wind
Structure [2]  Shrub
Usage [2]  The seed contains 35 - 55% of a drying oil. As well as being used in cooking, it is an ingredient of soaps, polishes, flypapers, paints and varnishes; It is also used as a lubricant and for lighting and as an ingredient in fuels for precision engines; The oil is used in coating fabrics and other protective coverings, in the manufacture of high-grade lubricants, transparent typewriter and printing inks, in textile dyeing (when converted into sulfonated Castor Oil or Turkey-Red Oil, for dyeing cotton fabrics with alizarine) and in the production of 'Rilson', a polyamide nylon-type fibre; The dehydrated oil is an excellent drying agent which compares favorably with tung oil and is used in paints and varnishes; The hydrogenated oil is utilized in the manufacture of waxes, polishes, carbon paper, candles and crayons; A fibre for making ropes is obtained from the stems; The growing plant is said to repel flies and mosquitoes; When grown in the garden it is said to rid it of moles and nibbling insects; The leaves have insecticidal properties; Cellulose from the stems is used for making cardboard, paper etc;
Height [2]  4.92 feet (1.5 m)
Width [2]  39 inches (1 m)
View Plants For A Future Record : Ricinus fringillae

Protected Areas

Ecosystems

Predators

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Golovinomyces orontii[5]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Derived from Allergy-Free Gardening OPALS™, Thomas Leo Ogren (2000)
♦ 2Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 3USDA Plants Database, U. S. Department of Agriculture
♦ 4HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants Gaden S. Robinson, Phillip R. Ackery, Ian J. Kitching, George W. Beccaloni AND Luis M. Hernández
♦ 5Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 6Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
♦ 7Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 8Species Interactions of Australia Database, Atlas of Living Australia, Version ala-csv-2012-11-19
♦ 9del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ 10New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research Plant-SyNZ™ database
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0