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

Ricinus fringillae (Castor-Oil Plant)

Synonyms:

Infraspecies

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]

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