Castor oil plant (Ricinus communis), also known as the castor bean, is a perennial flowering plant in the family, Euphorbiaceae. Castor beans (seeds), despite the term, are not beans and are source of castor oil. It is a fast-growing, suckering shrub. Glossy leaves are palmate with five to twelve deep lobes with coarsely toothed segments. In some varieties they start off dark reddish purple or bronze when young, gradually changing to a dark green, sometimes with a reddish tinge, as they mature. The leaves of some varieties are green practically from the beginning, whereas in yet others a pigment masks the green color of all the chlorophyll-bearing parts, leaves, stems and young fruit, so that they remain a dramatic purple-to-reddish-brown throughout the life of the plant. Seed capsule or fruit is a spherical, spiny, and greenish to reddish-purple containing large, oval shiny, bean-like, highly poisonous seeds with variable brownish mottling. Flowers lack petals and are unisexual in terminal panicle-like inflorescence of green or, in some varieties, shades of red.
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