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.
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.
Open sheet →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.