Madeira spurge
Euphorbia piscatoria
Family · Euphorbiaceae · Can kill
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
The spurge of Madeiran sea cliffs, with thick bare stems ending in a tuft of leaves, like a miniature palm. The name comes from its use to stun fish, and that says everything.
Dunes and sand · Scrubland · Walls and rocks
Also known asfisherman's spurge
How to tell it
A shrub with thick grey stems, leafless along most of their length, with a rosette of narrow fleshy leaves only at the tip. Scars of fallen leaves visible along the stem. Yellow-green inflorescences at the top, in winter. Very abundant white latex. Range: endemic to Madeira.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None, and the history explains why: the latex was poured into rock pools to stun fish for catching by hand, a practice now banned. It is among the most aggressive latexes in the Portuguese flora, causing severe skin burns and temporary blindness if it reaches the eyes. You do not break a branch of this plant.