Wood spurge
Euphorbia amygdaloides
Family · Euphorbiaceae · Poisonous
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.
Emergency
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The shade spurge, with rosettes of dark leaves atop reddish stems and yellow-green inflorescences that light up an oak wood floor in April. It has the same latex and the same warning as its sun-loving cousins.
Oak woods · Uplands · Streams and ditches
Also known asalmond-leaved spurge
How to tell it
Last year's stems carrying a rosette of dark, elongated, slightly hairy leaves at the top. Yellow-green cup inflorescences, with crescent glands whose two horns almost meet into a ring. White latex from any cut.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None
The whole family's rule applies: white latex, hands away from the face, and none of it goes in the mouth. Ecologically it is a plant of mature woodland and cool shade.
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
Community
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