OFFENSIVE

DUCK AND COVER

Any number of otherwise mild-mannered plants can, if provoked, forcibly eject seeds and scatter them at breakneck velocities. If you get one of these plants angry, back away. They could put your eye out—or worse.

A tropical tree that thrives in the West Indies and in Central and South America, reaching one hundred feet and sporting giant oval leaves, brilliant red flowers, and sharp spines. The sap is so caustic that it can kill fish or be used as an arrow poison. But you have the most to fear from the fruits, which explode with a loud bang when they are ripe. Its poisonous seeds can fly up to three hundred feet, earning it the nickname “dynamite tree.”

Flourishes on the English moor, where yellow flowers fill the air with a scent that some compare to custard or coconut. Native to Europe and invasive in some parts of the United States, gorse (also called whin or furze) welcomes fire into its dry branches. The flames cause seedpods to burst open, and rejuvenate the roots. On a hot day, sitting near a gorse can be hazardous: the pods explode without warning, ejecting seeds into the air with a noise that sounds like a gunshot.

A most unusual vegetable. While it is in the same family as cucumbers, squashes, and other gourds, it’s hardly something you’d want to add to your diet: the juice can cause vomiting and diarrhea if you swallow it and sting your skin if you come in contact with it. Its two-inch-long fruits are famous for bursting when ripe, squirting a slimy, mucuslike juice and seeds almost twenty feet away.

An Amazon jungle native that made its way to Europe courtesy of enterprising British plant explorers. Although uses for the sticky latex were not immediately apparent, chemists working in the 1800s quickly realized that the substance could be used to erase pencil lines, coat clothing to make them waterproof, and—thanks to some experimentation by an American named Goodyear—could even be used to make tires. In the wild the tree has another trick: its ripe fruits explode in the fall with a loud crack, sending cyanide-laden seeds several yards in all directions.

A beloved North American native that produces star-shaped yellow flowers in late autumn. The extract of the bark and leaves is used as an astringent to treat bites and bruises. The branches have been employed as divining rods to find underground sources of water or mines. In the fall, the dry, brown, acornlike seed capsules snap open and throw seeds up to thirty feet away.

A relative of the popular Christmastime mistletoe, is a parasite that sucks the life out of conifers in North America and Europe. Its fruit take over a year and a half to ripen, and when they do, the seeds blast off at the astonishing rate of sixty miles per hour—so fast that you might not even be able to see them fly by.