It'll shoot you. It'll stab you. It'll poison you. Nope, this isn't the suspect
in an Agatha Christie novel, this is one of the most dangerous trees in the world.
While its name may sound like child's play, this tree is anything but. This is the Sandbox Tree.
[Music]
Hey. I'm Tasha the Amazon and you're watching Floralogic. Today we're talking about hura
crepitans, a softwood tree that always chooses violence. The sandbox tree thrives in the tropics
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Otherwise known as the monkey-pistol tree, possumwood, monkey's dinner bell, dynamite tree, or jabillo,
the sandbox tree grows in almost all tropical areas of the Americas, especially in the Amazon.
The name sandbox tree comes from the use of its ripe fruit as a container for sand, which was used
as an ink blotter. Before blotting paper became more common, sand was standard on desks up till
the mid-1800s and was used to absorb excess ink. After composing a letter, the writer would sprinkle
the page with sand to soak it up. According to accounts from the time, receiving a sand-filled
letter was as annoying as it sounds. Understandably, this fell out of common practice by the late 1800s.
The sandbox tree is a member of Euphorbiaceae, commonly called the spurge family. The spurge
family consists of about 7,500 flowering plants that live on every continent except Antarctica.
Some famous spurge family cousins include the rubber tree, poinsettia, castor oil plant, and
cassava. But in the case of the sandbox tree, you can forget about the 's' in spurge, with all the ways
it's itching to kill you, this tree is definitely part of... the purge! Everything about the sandbox
tree just screams "you gon die". The exploding fruit, the spines, the poison... just one look
at it and you'll turn into a pillar of salt. Okay, so maybe I exaggerated a little on that last one,
but let's unpack the real duffel bag of weapons the sandbox tree has in its arsenal.
First, we have grenades in the form of exploding seed capsules. Don't be fooled
by the adorable mini pumpkin-like fruit of the sandbox tree, these poser pumpkins pack a punch.
Once they dry into seed capsules, they explode with a bang that has been compared to the blast
of a pistol. The force of the explosion flings the seeds at upwards of 240 kilometers an hour and can
send them shooting up to 45 meters. The fastest pitch in baseball is around 160 kilometers an
hour, so these trees are chucking out two centimeter seeds at around 50 faster than that.
These projectives can very easily hurt any humans or livestock standing nearby,
but luckily it's pretty easy to predict when they'll go off since they don't explode at night
or during damp days. They need the heat and dry of the sun to set them off. The fruit is made up of 15
or 16 sections arranged around a center axis. The fruit will lose up to 64% of its moisture
to reach a point when it becomes so dry that the sections violently split open and
separate from the access, throwing out the seeds. In scientific terms, this is when it goes cold bluey.
Firing seeds from the parent plant is more reliable than animal or wind dispersal since the
plant doesn't have to rely on outside forces to carry the seeds away. Exploding seed dispersal also
reduces competition, with offspring being flung as far away from the parent as possible. One study
suggests that for these reasons, exploding seeds may occur in so many different taxonomic groups. Go
check out our squirting cucumber video if you need more proof. Ok, back to the sandbox tree's deadly
arsenal. We're moving on to the stabbing bark which kind of resembles a medieval torture device.
Nothing says "don't climb me" like an entire trunk covered in powerful one-inch spikes.
These conical bark knives are half an inch wide at the base and taper to a needle-like point.
So what does it feel like to climb this tree? Like bear hugging a bundle of bayonets.
The spikes cover the tree from top to bottom. They are so thick on some individuals that their bases
touch, forming a suit of spiked impenetrable armor. You know, just to make sure you really don't get
any ideas about climbing it. The sandbox tree's third weapon is poison. The fruit is so poisonous
that one bite will have you questioning your life choices. Expect violent cramps, vomiting,
and everyone's favorite: diarrhea. The sap of the tree is also a poison that creates a nasty red
skin rash on contact. If you get it in your eyes, it may even cause you to go temporarily blind.
It's so toxic that its sap was used by some Carib Indigenous peoples as the poison for
their darts. Despite it plotting to kill you, some parts of this deadly tree can be put to good use.
Oil extracted from the seeds is said to be a great purgative, if, you know, puking
your guts out can be considered "great". The leaves have been used to treat eczema while
other extracts may be used to treat conditions from rheumatoid arthritis to intestinal worms.
Its seed oil is even being investigated as an insecticide. Due to its highly efficient seed
dispersal, the sandbox tree is primed for mass expansion. In Tanzania in East Africa where it
was once introduced as a shade tree, it's now considered an invasive species. So I guess in
addition to wanting to kill you, the sandbox tree has even larger ambitions: total world domination!
If you live in the tropics, be sure to give this dangerous tree a wide berth!
So what should we talk about next? Let me know in the comments and
don't forget to subscribe for new episodes every week. See ya!
[Music]
the sandbox tree's third weapon is poison, poison, po-po-poison
po-po-po-po-po
that girl is poisoned
[inaudible singing]
wrong move you're dead - that girl is poisoned
never trust a big button to smile ~ it's really important that we get all of that