264 EUPHORBIACEAE (SPURGE FAMILY) 



A common, worthless, and prolific little plant, not so much de- 

 tested as it deserves to be, for it and all its kindred are more or less 

 poisonous, their growth serving merely to impoverish the ground 

 and befoul it with seeds for another generation. 



Stem four inches to a foot in length, branching from the base, 

 declining or prostrate, slender, smooth, usually green on the under 

 side but red where exposed to the light, filled with a poisonous 

 milky juice. Leaves also reddish or red-spotted, opposite, less 

 than a half-inch long, obovate or spatulate, obtuse, unequal-sided, 

 finely and sharply toothed for about half their length, short- 

 petioled, with narrow stipules ending in a fringe of weak bristles. 

 Spurge flowers have neither calyx nor corolla, but are monoecious 

 after an odd fashion ; there is a funnel-shaped involucre on a short 

 terminal peduncle, in this case appearing lateral but not really 

 axillary, bearing four small, disk-like glands, each subtended by a 

 narrow, toothed appendage ; within the involucre are several male 

 flowers, each consisting of a single stamen on a pedicel subtended 

 by a tiny bract ; fertile flower a single three-celled, three-styled, and 

 three-seeded ovary, at first in the bottom of the involucre but soon 

 thrust out on a slender stipe and ripening in the outer air into a 

 nodding capsule with three carpels, each holding one seed ; in this 

 species the latter are hardly one-twelfth of an inch long, sharply 

 four-angled, the faces cross-wrinkled and pitted. 



Means of control the same as for the ubiquitous Spotted Spurge. 



UPRIGHT SPOTTED SPURGE 



Euphdrbia Preslii, Guss. 

 (Euphdrbia niitans, Lag.) 



Other English names: Stubble Spurge, Pasture Spurge, Eyebright, 



Slobber Weed. 



Native. Annual. Propagates by seeds. 

 Time of bloom : May to October. 

 Seed-time: June to November. 

 Range: All of North America east of the Rocky Mountains except 



the extreme north. 

 Habitat: Dry fields and meadows, old pastures, roadsides, and 



waste places. 



Dry stubbles sometimes seem to redden with young Spurges in a 

 few days after harvest, but usually the stalks were already there 



