Serrated spurge
Euphorbia serrata
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
The bluish spurge with wavy, toothed leaves that fills cornfields and inland banks. Like the whole family, it bleeds white latex from any cut, and that warning is enough.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Town and roadside
Also known assaw-tooth spurge
How to tell it
Immediate white latex from any broken part. Bluish stalkless leaves with a clearly toothed, wavy margin, clasping the stem. A yellow-green cup inflorescence with crescent-shaped glands.
What it is confused with
Purslane
Portulaca oleracea
They share the vegetable patch. Break a stem: spurge bleeds white latex at once, purslane bleeds nothing and is thick and succulent.
What it is for
None
The latex burns skin and is dangerous in the eyes, and if swallowed causes severe inflammation of the mouth and gut. The family rule always holds: white latex, hands away from the face.
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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