Seen in my garden!
Sea squill (Urginea maritima)
This Mediterranean plant has an enormous bulb, about 20 cm in diameter and weighing up to 2 kg, sitting at ground level. The particular feature of this flower is that it has its leaves in winter and its flower in summer.
The flowering is remarkable, as it takes the form of a single long flower stalk bearing small, very tightly packed white star-shaped flowers in an upright, spiralling spike that can reach more than 1.8 m in height.
During this month of August, ours grew by 10 cm every 24 hours, a speed that astonished our grandchildren.
Here are a few photos taken during the flowering, which changes as the stalk grows taller. At the end of its development, the stem carries the last flowers at the top, then a zone that seems dead, and at the bottom a multitude of seeds.
Because of these special features, this plant is very decorative in a garden.
Best wishes
Patrice
Urginea maritima
Common names: Sea squill, maritime onion, Escila , Adasogani , Squill , Basal Al Far , U'Nsul , Squill.
Urginea maritima, or Drimia maritima, commonly known as sea squill or officinal squill, is a bulbous flowering plant that now belongs to the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Scilloideae (although it was formerly classified in the Liliaceae). Its current scientific name is Urginea maritima, Drimia maritima being considered a synonym.
Botanical description
It is a plant that can reach up to 1 metre in height. It is characterised by a large bulb that can be either red or white depending on the variety (the red-bulbed squill is found mainly in Sicily, Spain, Greece and Lebanon. The white-bulbed squill is more common in North Africa).
It is found mainly in Mediterranean coastal regions, where it grows naturally in rocky soils and sandy ground. It is particularly suited to temperate to hot climates and can tolerate relatively dry conditions.
Relatively rare in France, it grows on dry, rocky soils as well as on sandy shores and is found mainly in Mediterranean areas. It is in the Alpes-Maritimes département and in Corsica that it is most common in France.
Traditional medicinal uses
The plant has a long history of use in traditional medicine, notably for treating respiratory complaints such as bronchitis and asthmatic bronchitis, whooping cough, and oedema
It was even considered as a possible substitute for digitalis in certain heart conditions. However, its toxicity and the variable concentration of its active substances led to it being abandoned, except on the southern shore of the Mediterranean.
Historically, the therapeutic virtues of squill have long been known: the Red Squill was used in medicine as far back as the time of the Greeks. It is mentioned in Hebrew papyri dated to around 1500 BC, and again by the historian Theophrastus, around 300 BC.
Medical practitioners in medieval Western Europe also knew the Red Squill. Its name appears in the “de Materia Medica”, a compendium on "the history of pharmacy setting out knowledge of the therapeutic properties of every substance used for healing", written by Dioscorides, a Greek physician, pharmacologist and botanist who lived between 40 and 90 AD. It is considered to be the first systematic treatise on pharmacology.
Its bulbs, which can weigh up to 2 kg, are sold in shops, notably in Egypt, and are used to treat arthritic pain and oedema and as a cardiac tonic. Since ancient Egypt they have been used as diuretics, expectorants, emetics and rat poison (Tuncok et al. 1995). Analysis of the chemical molecules found in squill fully confirms the plant's pharmacological use.
A bufadienolide, as found in toad skin
It is important to note that Red Squill contains scilliroside, a bufadienolide (one of the three poisons in toad skin), which is particularly toxic, causing convulsions before leading to death in rodents.
Composition of the toxins in toad skin:
Bufadienolides, which are cardiotonic steroids acting on the heart by disrupting the sodium-potassium pump (similar to digitalin).
Bufotoxins, which are in fact derivatives of bufadienolides but with chemical modifications that make them even more toxic than bufadienolides.
Bufotenines, from the tryptamine family. Their toxicity works differently, since they have hallucinogenic properties.
LD50 (read "lethal dose 50")
Red Squill (Urginea maritima) was used for a long time as a rat poison because of its
high toxicity in rats. The lethal dose 50 of scilliroside for male rats is 0.7 mg/kg and
0.43 mg/kg for females.
LD50 (read "lethal dose 50") is the dose at which 50% of a sample of animals die.
In rats: LD50 between 0.4 and 2 mg/kg!
In mice: LD50 0.17 mg/kg!
In England, squill was widely used in the second half of the 19th century to combat
the invasion of rodents. The traditional practice was to dig up wild bulbs in summer,
cut them into small pieces and dry them. The squill powder was then sold and added to rat bait.
Michel Brassinne