270 EUPHORBIACEAE (SPURGE FAMILY) 
several short-stalked, yellowish glands without appendages. 
Capsules smooth, with rounded angles, nearly one-sixth of an 
inch in diameter. Seeds ashy-gray, obscurely four-angled, bluntly 
ovoid, the surface tuberculate; they are often an impurity of grass 
and clover seeds. (Fig. 188.) 
Means of control 
Infested meadows should be harvested early, before the first 
flowers mature seed. The poisonous qualities of the milky juice 
are volatile and disappear with heat or drying, and such hay is 
wholesome. In grain fields the seedlings should be harrowed out 
in the spring, for the spreading habit of growth of the plant will 
crowd and starve the crop; if practicable, hand-pull the survivors ; 
if not, burn over the stubble. In cultivated ground tillage should 
be late in order to prevent the maturing of late-developed seed. , 
PAINTED LEAF 
Euphérbia heterophylla, L. 
(Poinséitia heterophylla, Small) 
Other English names: Cruel Plant, Various-leaved Spurge. 
Native. Annual or biennial. Propagates by seeds. 
Time of bloom: May to October. 
Seed-tume: June to November. 
Range: Illinois to Montana, southward to Mexico, Texas, and 
Florida. Widely distributed in tropical America. 
Habitat: Dry, sandy soil; fields, waste places. 
The milky juice of this plant, like that of all its tribe, will irritate 
and blister the skin, and, if eaten by stock, will have a like effect 
on the inner membranes and make the animals very sick; another 
reason for its name of Cruel Plant is that honey gathered from its 
flowers is acrid and emetic and unfit for use. 
Stems one to three feet tall, erect, smooth or nearly so, bright 
green, woody at base, with numerous branches, the lower spreading, 
the upper ones ascending. Leaves alternate and all with slender 
petioles, but most variable in shape, some being round, or ovate, 
or lance-shaped, or linear, with edges entire or toothed or wavy, 
often on the same plant; sometimes the upper leaves are fiddle- 
