castor-oil plant

Questions about castor-oil plant

What does castor-oil plant mean?

castor-oil plant means "large shrub of tropical Africa and Asia having large palmate leaves and spiny capsules containing seeds that are the source of castor oil and ricin; widely naturalized throughout the tropics".

What is another word for castor-oil plant?

Close synonyms include castor bean plant, palma christi, palma christ, Ricinus communis. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is castor-oil plant a common word?

castor-oil plant is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.