Honey spurge
Euphorbia mellifera
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.
Emergency
Europe's largest spurge, an eight-metre tree that smells intensely of honey when in flower. It is critically endangered in Madeira and as toxic as its small cousins.
Oak woods · Uplands · Streams and ditches
Also known asMadeira honey spurge
How to tell it
A small tree three to eight metres, with thick branches and leaf rosettes at the top. Elongated, dark green, glossy leaves with a clearly marked pale midrib. Yellow-green inflorescences in posies, with a honey smell noticeable from metres away. Abundant white latex from any cut. Range: endemic to Madeira.
What it is confused with
Madeira spurge
Euphorbia piscatoria
Both are Madeiran and both burn. The fisherman's spurge is a dry-coast shrub with bare stems and narrow leaves only at the tip; this is a humid-forest tree with broad leaves and a honey smell. The latex of both is equally dangerous.
What it is for
None
The honey smell draws you in and deceives: the latex burns skin and causes serious corneal injury, as in the whole family. Only a few hundred wild specimens remain in Madeira, although it is widely grown in European gardens.
The law says
A protected and critically endangered species in Madeira. Do not collect or cut it.
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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