Ewphorhia^ EUPHORBIACE^ (Brown). 223 



entire, petal-like, 24iornecl or divided into teeth or processes on tlie 

 outer margin, alternating with an inner series of 4-8 (usually 5) 

 membranous erect or inflexed entire or toothed lobes. Anthers 

 2-celIed ; cells usually subglobose and more or less diverging, 

 longitudinally dehiscent. Ovary wholly or partly included or ex- 

 s'ertcd, 3- (rarely 2-) celled, with a single ovule in each cell, pendulous 

 from the apex of the inner angle j styles 3, rarely 2, free or more 

 or less united, but rarely to the apex, entire or bitid at the tips. 

 Fruit a 3- (rarely 2-) celled capsule ; cells separating at maturity 

 from the central persistent axis and opening along their inner face 

 mto two valves, liberating the seed ; inner part of the vahes hard 

 or cartilaginous. Seed Avith a thin crustaceous testa, smooth or 

 variously sculptured, usually carunculate at the hilum; embryo 

 straight, with flat cotyledons, enclosed in a thick albumen. 



Herbs, slirublets, shrubs or trees, very variable in liabit, leafy or leafless, often 

 succulent or cactus-like, with copious milky juice ; leaves alternate or the upper 

 or all opposite, entire, toothed or rarely lobed ; stipules present or absent, in 

 aome of the succulent species often transformed into prickles or spines above a 

 pair of larger spines ; involucres solitary and terminal or axillary or in the forks of 

 the stems, or in axillary or terminal clusters or cymes or umbels, which are simple 

 or compound, paniculate, raceiuosely arranged along the branches in pairs or 

 rarely whorled, very rarely in axillary racemes or arising immediately behind the 

 base uf large solitary spines. 



DiSTUiB. Species about 1000, dispersed throughout the warmer and temperate 

 regions. 



This vast genus is remarkable, apart from its curious floral structure, for its 

 great range of variability of habit, and in South Africa there are more distinct 

 types of vegetative variation than in any other region of equal area. Yet however 

 diverse in appearance the various types may be, the floral structure remains 

 remarkably uniform, such variation as exists being chieily confined to the glands 

 of the involucre, which vary in number and also in their appendages. These 

 differences in the involucral glands, however, grade into one another completely 

 and sometimes vary in the same species and on the same individual, so that souie 

 specimens will have petal-like appendages or tooth-like processes to the gland-^, 

 whilst other specimens of undoubtedly the same species will be entirely without 

 such appendages or processes. Therefore I do not think that these characters can 

 ^ legitimately used to divide this exceedingly natural genus into either smaller 

 genera or sections, as has been done by some authors. 



In Commelin, IlorL Med. A mstehd^tm . I t. 17, is a very remarkable figure of^a 

 species of KSouth African Euphorbia allied to and possibly the same as E, Gorgonh, 

 but indeterminable, which under cultivation, doubtless owing to the more humid 

 atmosphere, has developed slender herbaceous, terete, leafy tips to its native-grown, 

 thick, fleshy, tuberculate branches, and one central branch that is entirely slender 

 and terete like those of herbaceous species. Thus demonstrating, in all probability, 

 the effect that dry climatic conditions have through long ages produced by 

 changing a herbaceous perennial into a succident plant. See the Gardeners' 

 Chronicle, 1914, Ivi. 230, fig. 91. 



The spines of the South African species are of three types :— 1, Where the 

 ^ex of the branch becomes transformed into a sharp spine ; this only occurs in 

 -o. Ugnosa and E. splnea, although one or two others have tapering branches, but 

 they are not acutely spine-tipped. 2, Where the peduncle, either after bearing a 

 flower or being abortive from its origin, becomes transformed into a hard sharp 

 spine ; all the species with solitary spines have them fonned in this manner. 

 3, Spines placed in pairs under the leaf or leaf-scar ; these only occur on succulent 

 species with ann:ular stems. In books these have been called "stipular spines/* 



