EUPHORBIACEAE. 245 



with one or two pendulous ovules in each cell. Styles or stigmas as many or 

 twice as many as the cells of the ovary. Capsule commonly 3-lobed, 3 or 2- 

 valved. Embryo straight, the flat cotyledons almost as wide as the fleshy or 

 oily endosperm. 



Flowers with a true calyx, not borne in an involucre; herbage densely stellate-pubescent. 



Upper leaves opposite; staminate flowers in corymbs; capsule 1-celled 



1. Eremocarpus. 



Leaves all alternate; staminate flowers in racemes; capsule 3-celled 2. Croton. 



Flowers borne in a calyx-like involucre, which has 4 or 5 teeth and bears more or less 

 petal-like glands; true calyx none; capsule 3-celled 3. Euphorbia. 



1. EREMOCARPUS Benth. 

 A low annual with entire 3-nerved leaves without stipules. Staminate flowers 

 in terminal corymbs; calyx 5 to 6-parted; stamens 6 or 7 on a hairy recep- 

 tacle; filaments exserted. Pistillate flowers 1 or few in the lower axils, without 

 calyx; ovary 1-celled, with 4 or 5 small glands at the base; style undivided, 

 stigmatic at apex; capsule 2-valved, 1-seeded. (Greek eremos, solitary, and 

 karpos, fruit.) 



1. E. setigerus Benth. Turkey Mullein. Stems dichotomously branched, 

 prostrate and forming close mats 1 to 2 ft. wide or more, sometimes ascend- 

 ing and forming a very broad low plant; herbage gray with an appressed 

 stellate pubescence and rough with spreading hispid hairs; leaves alternate 

 or the upper opposite, thick, ovate, the smaller varying to almost round, % 

 to iy. 2 in. long, the petioles nearly as long or longer; staminate flowers pedi- 

 celed, the oblong segments of the calyx 1 line long; pistillate flowers in clus- 

 ters of 1 to 3, the ovary and style densely pubescent; capsule 2 lines long; 

 seeds smooth and shining, 1% lines long. 



Dry open areas, very abundant towards the interior: plains of the Sacra- 

 mento and San Joaquin; Sierra Nevada foothills; low hills and valley fields 

 of the Coast Eanges. The California Indians used the heavy-scented herbage 

 of this plant to stupefy fish in small streams in order that they might be 

 caught by hand, whence the Spanish-Californian name, Yerba del Pescado. 

 The seeds are sought by turkeys and by turtle-doves. Called "Woolly White 

 Drouth Weed ' ' in Orange Co. 



2. CROTON L. 



Ours perennial herbs, suffrutescent at base, with alternate entire leaves. 

 Staminate flowers in racemes; calyx 5-parted; glands of the disk as many 

 as and opposite the sepals; stamens 5 to many. Pistillate flowers mostly 

 solitary; calyx 5-parted; ovary 3-celled, the cells 1-ovuled; styles twice forked. 

 Capsule 3-lobed, globose in outline. Seeds smooth and shining, with a caruncle. 

 (Kroton, a tick, the Greek name of the Castor Plant, its seeds resembling that 

 insect.) 



1. C. calif ornicus Mull. Arg. Stems branching, erect or diffuse, from a 

 woody base; herbage hoary, except the upper side of the leaves which is green 

 and finely stellate-pubescent; leaves oblong, % to iy 2 in. long, on petioles 4 

 lines to over 1 in. long; staminate racemes at length y 2 in. long, developing 

 gradually, the flowers soon deciduous after anthesis and leaving an elongated 

 naked rachis; staminate calyx jibout 1 line long; disk obscurely 5-lobed; sta- 

 mens 9 to 11, with hairy filaments; pistillate flowers on short pedicels; styles 

 twice forked; capsule scurfy, 3 lines in diameter. 



Sandy hills near the ocean from the San Francisco peninsula southward to 

 Southern California: also near Antioch. 



