Botanical Source.—This plant has many common names, and in some sections is improperly called Bowman's root. It is a perennial plant, with a round, slender, erect stem, 1 or 2 feet high, generally simple and smooth. The root is yellowish, large and branching. The leaves are scattered, sessile, oblong-ovate, or linear, entire, flat or revolute at the margin, smooth in some plants, very hairy in others, verticillate and opposite in the umbel, and from 1 to 2 inches in length. The flowers are in large, terminal umbels, with a corolla-like involucre, which is large, white, and showy. The umbels are 5-rayed, supported by as many bracteal leaves; not infrequently a small axilliary branch or two arises from the sides of the stem below the umbel. The rays of the umbels are repeatedly trifid or dichotomous, each fork attended by 2 leaflets and a flower. The involucre is large, rotate, white, with 5 obtuse, petal-like segments; at the base of these divisions are 5 interior, very small, obtuse segments. Stamens 12; a great portion of the plants are wholly staminiferous. The fruit is a smooth, 3-lobed, 3-celled capsule; the cells are 1-seeded, and the seeds smooth.
Lucas Land
Flowering Spurge
Euphorbia Corollata
Euphorbia corollata is found in dry fields and woods throughout portions of Canada and the United States, flowering from June to September. The milky juice, which exudes freely from all parts of the plant when bruised, proves very irritating to the cutaneous structures, and, if kept in contact sufficiently long, will cause pustulation and even vesication. The root, or part used, when dried, is odorless and nearly tasteless.
