How the Squirting Cucumber Shoots and Spreads Its Seeds

This cucumber just fired its seeds at 70 kilometers an hour, and for days before it fired, it was taking aim.

It's the squirting cucumber, a wild Mediterranean plant that spreads its seeds by shooting them out.

Its fruit fills with slime around the seeds, pressurized like an overfilled water balloon.

At first, it hangs almost straight down.

Fired from there, its seeds would go straight up and land right beside it, so it moves fluid out of the fruit and into its stalk.

The stalk swells and stiffens and lifts the fruit to about 43 degrees, close to the angle that throws farthest.

Then the fruit snaps off its stalk, and the hole left behind becomes a nozzle.

The stalk springs back and kicks the fruit into a spin, tipping it more upright as it fires.

Each seed leaves slower and steeper than the one before.

That spin isn't a flaw. It turns one shot into a spray, so the seeds land spread out, not in one pile.