Cultivars
'Carmencita'
This plant has an upright habit with bright bronze foliage and bright red female flowers.

'Impala'
This compact plant to 1.5m (5ft) has bright red new foliage and purple-red leaves and produces brilliant scarlet fruit.

'Red Spire'
This shrub has an upright habit to 3 m (10 ft) with bronze-flushed foliage.

'Zanzibarensis'
This shrub has an upright habit to 3 m (10 ft) with white veined foliage.

Weed Potential
As a weedCastor Oil Plant is highly invasive and infests gullies, bushland margins, flood plains or along water courses and disturbed soil. It forms dense stands that reduces light inhibiting the regeneration of native tree or shrub seedlings and prevents ground flora from growing.

The plant appears annually in cold climates or is perennial in warmer regions and is fast growing producing abundant fruit within one year from summer to autumn. The seeds are expelled explosively for up to several metres and can remain dormant in the soil for 3-years. The seeds are dispersed by birds, animals or water and in soil or garden waste.

Controlmethods include physically digging out seedlings and small plants when the soil is moist ensuring that the roots are removed. Fruiting branches should be bagged and destroyed. Plants can be cut and painted with a non-selective herbicide during spring.

Young plants or seedlings may be sprayed with a non-selective herbicide added by a surfactant to penetrate the leaf surface during spring, while the plant is actively growing but follow up spraying will be required. Mechanical removal of mature plants stimulates mass seed germination and follow up treatment will be required.