EUPHORBIACEAE 
65 
POLYGALACEAE. POLYGALA FAMILY 
Perennial herbs or bushes with alternate simple leaves. Flowers 
irregular, resembling the papilionaceaous flowers of Leguminosae, but not 
like them in structure, borne in terminal racemes. Stamens (in ours) 
monadelphous. Ovary simple, superior.—Species about 400, temperate 
and tropical regions. 
1. POLYGALA L. Milkwort 
Stems often with milky juice. Sepals 5, thin, the two lower and the 
upper keeled one of about the same size, the two lateral much larger, 
colored, and projecting like the wings of a pea-flower. Petals 3, united 
at base, forming a dorsal pair, the third anterior, hooded above and often 
beaked or crested, enclosing the stamens and style. Stamens 8, monadel¬ 
phous, the tube open on one side and adnate to the base of the petals. 
Ovary 2-celled with one ovule in each cell; style long, curved. Capsule 
with thin walls, flattened contrary to the partition, rounded and often 
notched above, dehiscing loculicidally at the margin. (Polus, much, and 
gala, milk, an ancient Greek name for some shrub used as a stimulant.) 
1. P. californica Nutt. Stems many, 7 to 19 cm. high; leaves oblong- 
or elliptic-ovate, 1.2 to 3.6 cm. long; flowers of two sorts, those near 
the root apetalous and developing most of the fruit, those of the ter¬ 
minal racemes with rose-purple corollas 10 to 12 mm. long.—Wooded or 
brush-covered slopes. 
EUPHORBIACEAE. SPURGE FAMILY 
Ours herbs (one species woody at base) with simple leaves. Staminate 
and pistillate flowers without corolla, often destitute of calyx as well, 
sometimes exceedingly reduced and both sorts of flowers inclosed in a 
calyx-like involucre. Stamens 1 to many. Ovary superior, 3 or 1-celled, 
forming a 3-lobed pod splitting into 2 or 3 valves.—Species more than 
3000, mostly in the tropics. 
Flowers with a true calyx (not borne in an involucre). 
Upper leaves opposite; staminate flowers in corymbs.1. Eremocarpus. 
Leaves all alternate; staminate flowers in racemes. 
Leaves entire, not peltate.2. Croton. 
Leaves peltate, palmately 5 to 12-lobed.3. Ricinus. 
Flowers borne in a calyx-like involucre which has 4 or 5 teeth and bears more 
or less petal-like glands. 3. Euphorbia. 
1. EREMOCARPUS Benth. 
Low annual. Leaves 3-nerved, entire. Staminate flowers in terminal 
clusters, the calyx 5- or 6-parted with 6 or 7 exserted stamens. Pistillate 
flowers 1 or few in the axils, without calyx and with a 1-celled ovary 
having 4 or 5 glands at base; style one. Pod 2-valved, 1-seeded. (Greek 
eremos, solitary, and karpos, fruit.) 
1. E. setigerus Benth. Turkey Mullein. Stems dichotomously 
branched, forming a low spreading or prostrate plant 1.4 to 5.7 dm. broad, 
or on sterile soils the plants reduced to mere dwarfs 1 to 2 cm. high; 
leaves alternate or the upper opposite, ovate or round, on petioles as long; 
seed smooth and shining, 3 mm. long.—Low clay or gravelly hills or 
plains. 
