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, shori- 
petioled, with narrow stipules ending in a fringe of weak bristles. 
Spurge flowers have neither calyx nor corolla, but are moncecious 
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 
Euphérbia Préslii, Guss. 
(Euphérbia nutans, 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 
