CHAP. XCIX. 



EVPHORBrj CEJE. z:upho'rb/^. 



1331 



smooth, stalked, opposite, entire leaves. Flowers aggregate, from axillary 

 buds, whitish. Fruit green. (^Smith Eng. F/., iv. p. 132.) 



Genus I. 



EUPnO'RBTA L. 



The Euphorbia, or Spurge. 

 Monandria. 



Lin. Syst. Monoe^cia 



Identification. Lin. Oen., 243. ; Lara. 111., t. 411. ; Smith Eng. Fl, 4. p. ."JS. 



Synonymes. Tlth^malus Toitrn. Inst.,i. 18., Giertn. Fruct., t. 107. ; Euphorbe, Fr. ; Wolfsmilch, Ger. 

 Derivation. From Eupkorbus, physician to Juba, king of Mauritania, who is said first to have used 

 some of the plants of this genus in medicine. 



Desa-iption, Sfc. This genus consists of milky plants, most of which are herb- 

 aceous, but two or three of which are rather woody. The flowers of the hardy 

 kinds are generally of a greenish colour, which renders them inconspicuous ; 

 and they have all an extremely acrid juice, which has the appearance of milk. 

 This juice was formerly considered medicinal, and is still used occasionally to 

 destroy warts, or for raising slight blisters. The plants are propagated by 

 division. The only two worth cultivating, as shrubby, appear 

 to us to be the E. Characias L. and E. spinosa L. 



a. E. Characias L., Mart. Mill., No. 95., Smith Eng. Fl., 

 iv. p. 68., Eng. Bot., t. 44'2. ; E. aleppica of some gardens ; 

 and our^o. 1212. — An upright, bushy, leafy plant, green in 

 its foliage, and purplish brown in the bark of its shoots, 

 which are mostly unbranched. The flowers are in stalked 

 panicles a few in each panicle, and the panicles are disposed 

 racemosely along the upper portions of the shoots. The 

 more obviously coloured part of the inflorescence is of a dark 

 purple. The scent of the flowers is powerfully fetid and 

 disagreeable. The plant, in a sheltered nook, under a wall, 

 will attain to the height of 3 ft. or more (in Martyn's Miller, 

 5 ft. or 6 ft.) ; and is interesting, even when not in flower, 

 from its being evergreen, and from the character of its fo- 

 liage ; the leaves being lanceolate, acute, entire, downy, dark 

 green, and spreading every way. (S»iitk Eng. Fl., and obser- 

 vation.) It is indigenous in France, Spain, and Italy, accord- 

 ing to Willd. Sp. PI. ; and, according to Mr. VVhately, as 

 quoted in Eng. Fl., it is very plentiful in the Forest of 

 Needwood, Staffordshire, and undoubtedly wild there, A plant which we 

 have had in our garden, at Bays water, since 1828, was found wild by us, in 

 the July of that year, in a wood belonging to John Perry, Esq., 

 at Stroud House, near Hazlemere. It forms a dense evergreen 

 bush, admirably adapted for rockwork ; its fine, dark, bluish 

 green, shining leaves, with which the shoots are densely clothed, 

 render it highly ornamental at every season of the year ; and its 

 flowers, which appear in February, continue on the plant through 

 the spring and part of the following summer. 



E. spinosa L.,Wats. Dend. Brit., t. 45, and our fig. 1209. — A 

 leafy, shrubby plant ; a native of the south of Europe ; generally 

 kept in green-houses in Britain, where it assumes the character 

 of an erect shrub, about 2 ft. high, with a decidedly ligneous 

 stem. The tips of the branches become dry with age, and as, 

 though withered, they continue on the plant, they have the ap- 

 pearance of spines. It was cultivated by Miller, in 1752, but is 

 rare in British collections. In the open air, in the Botanic 

 Garden at Cambridge, it is a recumbent shrub. It is not easily 

 propagated by cuttings made in the common way, but is said to 

 grow readily troin cuttings of the roots. 



4s 3 



