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A team led by the University of Oxford has solved a mystery that has intrigued scientists for centuries: how does the squirting cucumber squirt?

ELATERIUM, a drug consisting of a sediment deposited by the juice of the fruit of Ecballium Elaterium, the squirting cucumber, a native of the Mediterranean region.

Of course, you know my friend the squirting cucumber.

Elaterium, a drug obtained from the mucus of the fruit of the squirting cucumber; is a most powerful purgative, and was known to the ancients.

Amid the wayside rubbish grows one of the gourd family, Ecbalium elaterium, commonly called the squirting cucumber, whose fruit—a rough and extremely bitter little cucumber—is the size of a date.