THE WOOD SPURGE— continued. 
the Castor-oil plant, for instance ( Ricinus communis Linne), which strikingly resemble 
beetles, this aril represents the head of the insect. 
In the large genus Euphorbia, of which there are some six hundred species, the 
small inflorescences are often rendered more conspicuous by leafy bracts. In our 
twelve British species these are a pale yellowish green ; but in the sub-genus 
Poinsettia, often grown in our greenhouses, they form large handsome scarlet leaves. 
The inflorescence of Euphorbia itself is somewhat puzzling. It is enclosed in a little 
five-toothed, cup-like structure termed the cyathium (from the Greek Kvaflos, kualhos, 
a wine-cup), formed of five united bracteoles, which bears on its edge in four of the 
sinuses between the teeth crescent-like yellow glandular bodies which secrete a little 
nectar. This cup encloses a number of staminate flowers, each consisting of a single 
stamen and one central, i.e. terminal, female flower. Five staminate flowers originate 
first, one opposite to each bracteole of the cyathium, and each of these is succeeded 
by others in a cincinnus, or heterodromous unilateral cyme. Each staminate flower 
consists of a single stamen on a short pedicel ; and that this stamen constitutes a 
flower, and that the stalk below the little articulation is pedicel and the part above it 
filament, is shown by the allied African genus Anthostema, in which there is a perianth 
at the point corresponding to the articulation. The female terminal flower develops 
before the staminate ones and hangs over the edge of the cyathium on a relatively 
long pedicel. It consists of three carpels, united in the ovarian region, with styles 
each bifurcating above. 
The Wood Spurge ( Euphorbia amygdaloides Linn6) is, perhaps, the handsomest 
of our British species. It has a perennial, woody rhizome, from which it sends up 
stout, erect biennial shoots. These may be seen as crimson stalks surmounted by a 
tuft of blue-green lanceolate leaves in our March woodlands, and they do not flower 
until their second season. They then hang downwards in a paler green shoot, the 
junction between the growth of the two seasons being readily distinguishable. By 
April the new shoot stands erect and branches into an umbellate group of five to ten 
slender branches, bearing many pairs of vivid pale green bracts, united at their bases 
so as to form an almost circular disk. The uppermost of these will generally form 
a shallow cup in the centre of which are three cyathia. As, in a sad little poem, 
Dante Gabriel Rossetti sang — 
“ The wood-spurge has a cup of three, 
. . . three cups in one.’* 
In autumn the leaves and stems may be alike of a brilliant crimson. 
