Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Prostrate to slightly procumbent annual with spreading dichotomous branches 3-30 cm long, herbage puberulent with sparse, simple, spreading hairs. Herbage often red-brown to gray-brown.

Leaves: At least twice as long as wide, petioled, blades 5.5-15.5 mm, ovate to obovate or oblong, margins entire or sometimes with a few small, irregular teeth.

Flowers: Cyathia 1.2-1.5 mm wide, glands maroon, oval, .6-.9 m wide, appendages rather showy, white, fading pink, usually considerably wider and longer than the glands; staminate flowers 20-25 in a cyathium.

Fruits: Capsules sharply 3-angled, 1.2-1.4 mm long and wide, hirsutulous, exserted and reflexed at maturity.

Ecology: Found on sandy flats and on gentle slopes from 500-4,000 ft (152-1219 m); flowers throughout the year.

Ethnobotany: Unknown for this species, other species in genera have medicinal use.

Etymology: Euphorbia is named for Euphorbus, Greek physician of Juba II, King of Mauretania, pediculifera means bearing lice.

Synonyms: Euphorbia pediculifera

Editor: SBuckley, 2010

Plant: Perennial; Stem prostrate to erect, hairy or becoming glabrous; sap milky

Leaves: cauline, opposite, short-petioled, 2-20 mm; stipules separate, thread-like; blade ovate to spoon-shaped, hairy to glabrous, tip acute, margin entire

INFLORESCENCE: flower-like, generally 1 per node; involucre 1.5-2 mm, bell-shaped, hairy to glabrous; gland 0.5 mm, oblong, appendages unequal, entire to almost 0 on some glands, largest wider than gland

Flowers: Staminate flowers 22-25, generally in 5 clusters around pistillate flower, each flower a stamen; Pistillate flower: 1, central, stalked; ovary chambers 3, ovule 1 per chamber, styles 3, divided to base

Fruit: capsule, 2 mm, ovoid, lobed, hairy; Seed 1-1.5 mm, ovoid, white, 3-angled, transversely 4-5-ridged, ridges rounded

Misc: Dry slopes; < 500 m.; Jan-Apr

Notes: Flowers born in a cyanthia. 25 staminate flowers and one pistallate flower. Each cyanthia with 5 white petaloid appendages and each of those with a dark red-purple gland.Petaloid appendages up to 2mm wide or obsolete.Seeds white and encircled by 4-5 ridges.

References: Kearney & Peebles; Arizona Flora. McDougall; Seed plants of Northern Arizona. ASU specimans