Pretty Poison

This is the infamous 'malo' plant. We found this on a sandy hillside among the cactus and other desert flora. George says that brushing up against one of these stinging nettles is incredibly painful and we kept our distance from the many plants we observed.

This plant I observed upon leaving the swimming/aquafer site at San Bartole. This is the castor plant,with its accompanying seeds. It grows 6-15 feet tall. This speciman was a good 10-12 feet tall. The seeds or beans are used in quite a number of everyday items, but it is also quite poisonous. It is the source of the deadly ricin poison. Gram for gram it is 6000 times as poisonour as cyanide and 12,ooo times as poisonous as rattlesnake venom. The 'beans' though not true beans, look much like pinto beans, or at one stage, look remarkable like ticks engorged on blood. The plants like sandy, well drained, but moist soil such as is near the aquifer. Children beware.