Americanized Leafy Spurge Gardens: Juicy, Rooty, Seedy Ground Cover

Summary: Americanized leafy spurge gardens sometimes harm crops and livestock and always help hopeless soils and hint of practical and pretty plant relatives.

closeup of leafy spurge's flowers and immature fruit capsules; Butte County, southeastern Idaho; June 23, 2010: Matt Lavin, CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr

Rhizomes, sap and seeds in Americanized leafy spurge gardens augur poorly for cereal, corn, cucumber, sorghum, soybean and sugarcane croplands and for pastures and rangelands but well for railways, roadsides and wastelands.

The perennial native of west Asia's Caucasus Mountains belongs with 10 other species on lists of weedy spurge-related herbs, shrubs and trees in the Euphorbiaceae family. The Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho and Iowa state governments consider leafy spurge, not native hairy spurge, three-seeded mercury and thyme-leaved spurge, a weed. The Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming state governments describe leafy spurge as weedy.

Leafy spurge, not nonnative castor bean, experiences sanctions from the Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Saskatchewan provincial and Canadian and Mexican federal governments.

Grainy, oblong, 0.51- to 0.75-inch- (13- to 19-millimeter-) long, 0.08- to 0.16-inch- (2- to 4-millimeter-) wide cotyledons fit onto pale green stems red-browning at soil levels.

Lance-shaped, opposite-arranged, stalkless first leaf stages get the embryonic leaf stage's milky, toxic juice that generates food poisoning in livestock and skin rashes in susceptible people. Mature lance-shaped, 0.79- to 2.76-inch- (2- to 7-centimeter-) long, 0.12- to 0.19-inch- (3- to 5-millimeter-) wide, stalkless foliage, whether alternate-arranged, opposite-positioned or whorled, has smooth margins. It inclines from blue-green, branched, 11.81- to 39.37-inch- (30- to 100-centimeter-) tall, hairless, juice-oozing, somewhat woody stems atop deep, 16.4-foot- (5-meter-) long underground stems called rhizomes.

Pink buds jumpstart land invasions with rhizome fragments rooting from 9.19-foot (2.8-meter) depths and join seeding stages as main reproduction means in Americanized leafy spurge gardens.

Leafy spurge, named faitours grass, Hungarian spurge and wolf's-milk commonly and Euphorbia esula (Euphorbus's [52 B.C.-A.D. 23] sharp [juice]), knows flower-clustered, April- to November-blooming, umbrella-shaped cyathia.

Green-yellow, imperfect, regular clusters each lay claim to four crescent-shaped, nectar-secreting glands and lie within cuplike, flower-protecting, leaflike, opposite-arranged, 0.47-inch- (1.2-centimeter-) long, 0.39-inch- (1-centimeter-) wide bracts. They must mix female flowers, maintaining one pistil each and merged into groups of three and male flowers maintaining one stamen each and merged into foursomes. Leafy spurge, described by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778), nudges into fruiting and seeding stages within 30 days of the first flowerings.

Americanized leafy spurge gardens offer the 16.4-foot (5-meter) area around each plant 250 seeds per stem from dry, explosive, fruiting, nodding, three-seeded, 0.16-inch- (4-millimeter-) long capsules.

Brown- and yellow-flecked, glossy, gray, oval to oblong, smooth, 0.08- to 0.09-inch- (2- to 2.4-millimeter-) long, 0.067- to 0.07-inch- (1.7- to 1.8-millimeter-) wide seeds prove buoyant.

Leafy spurge germination quickens at ambient temperatures of 78.8 degrees Fahrenheit (26 degrees Celsius) at 0.59- to 1.97-inch (1.5- to 5-centimeter) depths and on water surfaces.

Rhizome reproduction, seed buoyancy and seed viability 5 to 8 years in soil result in dense stands along canal, ditch and river shorelines and in paddies. They sprout leafy spurge during floods and rains and on waterlogged soils and, with cypress purge, on drier croplands, fencelines, gardens, pastures, railways, rangelands and wastelands.

Americanized leafy spurge gardens treat ground reflection and surface runoff on problem soils away from such nonweedy relatives as cassava, croton, crown-of-thorns, poinsettia, rubber and tapioca.

Leafy spurge (Euphorbia esula) populates such disturbed sites as the edges of gravelly draws where they abut sagebrush steppes; Butte County, southeastern Idaho; Aug. 18. 2009: Matt Lavin, CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

closeup of leafy spurge's flowers and immature fruit capsules; Butte County, southeastern Idaho; June 23, 2010: Matt Lavin, CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/plant_diversity/5144348570/

Leafy spurge (Euphorbia esula) populates such disturbed sites as the edges of gravelly draws where they abut sagebrush steppes; Butte County, southeastern Idaho; Aug. 18. 2009: Matt Lavin, CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/plant_diversity/4031384669/

For further information:

Dickinson, Richard; and Royer, France. 2014. Weeds of North America. Chicago IL; London, England: The University of Chicago Press.

"Euphorbia esula L." Tropicos® > Name Search.
Available @ http://www.tropicos.org/Name/12802082

Linnaeus, Carl. 1753. "48. Euphorbia esula." Species Plantarum, vol. I: 461. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/358480

Weakley, Alan S.; Ludwig, J. Christopher; and Townsend, John F. 2012. Flora of Virginia. Edited by Bland Crowder. Fort Worth TX: BRIT Press, Botanical Research Institute of Texas.