Lunes de miel

L'Euphorbe des bois  (Euphorbia amygdaloides) est une plante vivace commune des sous-bois ombragés européens.

Les fleurs, présentes de mars à juillet, sont de couleur jaune et monoïques, c’est-à-dire portant les deux sexes mais séparés. Les fleurs mâles sont réduites aux étamines et la fleur femelle au pistil.

Les feuilles sont obovales, entières, contrairement à celle de l’euphorbe reveil- matin (E. helioscopia) qui sont dentées. Les bractées florales sont soudées deux à deux. 

Les quatre glandes nectarifères sont jaunes, en croissant à cornes convergentes. Elles attirent les abeilles qui en assurent la pollinisation et les fourmis qui assurent la dissémination  des graines (myrmécochorie) comme nous l’avions rencontré notamment chez l’Hellebore.

L'Euphorbe se développe aussi par voie végétative depuis son rhyzome.

C'est une plante vénéneuse, notamment son latex urtiquant et ses graines qui sont violemment vomitives et donc dangereux pour l'homme et le bétail.

Euphorbia amygdaloides, the wood spurge, is a species of flowering plant, bushy evergreen perennial and native to European woodland locations.

It has dark green slightly hairy leaves and a complex green-yellow inflorescence, typical of Euphorbia, appears in spring and early summer. It is monoecious (bearing male and female flowers on the same plant) with the male flowers reduced to only the stamen and the females to the pistil.

Spurges possess a highly specialized inflorescence (bloom), called the cyathium.  This cyathium is a cup-like cluster or whorl of bracts that encloses a group of structures including a single female (pistillate) flower, ringed by several male (staminate) flowers.  Both are enclosed within a ring formed by four horseshoe shaped glands (involucral glands).  These glands secrete a shallow layer of nectar which is attractive to flies, bees, and other insects like ants.

Its seeds are dispersed by ants (the so-called myrmecochory we already found in Helleborus foetidus).

The plant can spread rapidly by underground root too.

It is toxic for men and cattle. Its milky latex can cause irritation on contact with the skin.

The good spurge from the doctor Euphobos

These are Spurges, of which the botanical name, Euphorbia derives from Euphorbos, the Greek physician of king Iuba (or Juba) II of Numidia (52–50 BC – 23 AD), who married the daughter of Anthony and Cleopatra and used the plant as a powerful laxative.

 

Euphorbias range from tiny annual plants to large and long-lived trees. The genus has over or about 2,000 members, making it one of the largest genera of flowering plants. Several of them, as picture above, can be found in our forest:

 

Euphorbia lathyris, rare but easy to recognize.
 

 

Euphorbia amygdaloïdes 

 

 

The plants share the feature of having a poisonous, milky, white latex-like sap, and unusual and unique kind of floral structures called a cyathium, where each flower in the head is reduced to its barest essential part needed for sexual reproduction.

More to be seen on:

http://jeantosti.com/Fleurs/euphorbe.htm