Staminate flowers
scattered over inner surface of involucre, each composed of a
single stamen on a thread-like pedicel with a rudimentary calyx
or tiny bract below it. A solitary pistillate flower at bottom of
involucre, consisting of 3-celled ovary; 3 styles, 2-cleft, at
length forming an erect 3-lobed capsule separating into 3
2-valved carpels. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. high, often brightly spotted,
simple below, umbellately 5-branched above (usually). Leaves:
Linear, lance-shaped or oblong, entire; lower ones alternate,
upper ones whorled.
Preferred Habitat - Dry soil, gravelly or sandy.
Flowering Season - April-October.
Distribution - From Kansas and Ontario to the Atlantic.
A very commonplace and uninteresting looking weed is this spurge,
which no one but a botanist would suspect of kinship with the
brilliant vermilion poinsettia, so commonly grown in American
greenhouses. Examination shows that these little bright white
cups of the flowering spurge, simulating a five-cleft corolla,
are no more the true flowers in the one case than the large red
bracts around the poinsettia's globular greenish blossom
involucres are in the other.
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