108 ENGLISH BOTANY. 



erect, simple at the base, with several elongating barren leafy branches 

 in the npper part, and with a few short flowering branches immediately 

 below tlie umbel. Leaves scattered, crowded, sessile, strapshaped, 

 obtuse, entire, those on the barren branches linear-strapshaped. 

 Umbel-rays 12 to 20, once or twice 2-furcate. Bracts romidish-deltoid, 

 subcordate, subobtuse, scarcely mucronate, not connate. Involucral 

 glands lunate, with short inciu^ved cusps. Capsules globular, 3-lobed; 

 cocoa rounded on the back, with 2 broad bands of minute scale- 

 like points, one on each side of the faint dorsal farrow. Seeds 

 quadrate-subglobular, smooth, dim, ashy-gre)^, with a rather large 

 suborbicular caruncule. Plant glabrous; leaves rather thick, more 

 or less glaucous. 



In woods, but probably only where it has been planted. The only 

 place where it may be wild is at Whitbarrow, in Westmoreland. 

 Besides this it is reported from the counties of Hants, Bedford, 

 Stafford, Salop, Glamorgan, York, Cumberland, Edinburgh; but pro- 

 bably in some of these stations E. Esula has been mistaken for it. 



[England, Scotland.] Perennial. Spring, early Summer, and 



again in Autumn. 



Stem 6 inches to 1 foot high. Leaves ^ to f inch long, those on 

 the barren branches crowded and extremely narrow. These barren 

 branches, late in the year, elongate, so as to overtop the primary umbel, 

 and often flower in autumn, but at first tliey are very short. Umbel- 

 rays erect, rather short, forked only at the very apex. Bracts pale 

 yellow, at length often tinged with red, the pair at the base of the 

 fork J to i inch across. Capsule jV i^^h long. Leaves somewhat 

 fleshy, at first imbricated, at length spreading. 



The only species with which this can be confounded is the narrow- 

 leaved variety of E. Esula: but E. Cyparissias has the rootstock with 

 the stolons running underground for a greater length; the stems 

 shorter, with the upper branches more upright and elongating to a 

 greater extent ; the leaves much more numerous, shorter, and much 

 narrower ; the umbel before flowering more hemispherical, and flower- 

 ing while the rays are still so short that it resembles a head ; the bracts 

 are paler, considerably smaller, less cordate and less mucronate ; the 

 cusps of the glands shorter; the capsule smaller, about yL- inch long, 

 roughened over a greater part of the back ; the seeds more globular 

 and with an ashy covering. 



Cyprus Spurge. 

 Frcncli, Eu2)horle j)et{t cypres, Gei'man, Gyj^resscn Wolfsmilch. 



