Madeira spurge
Euphorbia piscatoria
Family · Euphorbiaceae · Can kill
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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.
Emergency
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.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
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