Plate 1 figs. a–h · 5 observations
This species has been photographed under an open licence only 5 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.
Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.
Native range 13 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Altay | ALT | ASIA-TEMPERATE |
| Chita | CTA | |
| Inner Mongolia | CHI | |
| Irkutsk | IRK | |
| Kazakhstan | KAZ | |
| Krasnoyarsk | KRA | |
| Mongolia | MON | |
| Tuva | TVA | |
| West Siberia | WSB | |
| Xinjiang | CHX | |
| Austria | AUT | EUROPE |
| East European Russia | RUE | |
| South European Russia | RUS |
Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.
Where it actually grows measured, from 121 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -20.6 °C | -16.9 °C | -13.2 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 21.1 °C | 23.8 °C | 26.0 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 333 mm | 477 mm | 705 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 32 mm | 68 mm | 116 mm |
It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 121 research-grade observations of Euphorbia caesia that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.
This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.
Also published as 12 synonyms
A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.
- Euphorbia caesia var. pilosa Ledeb.
- Euphorbia cyparissias var. glabriuscula C.A.Mey.
- Euphorbia cyparissias var. pubescens C.A.Mey.
- Euphorbia eriophylla Kar. & Kir.
- Euphorbia esculenta var. cyparissioides Boiss.
- Euphorbia esula var. humilior C.A.Mey.
- Euphorbia subcordata f. obtusifolia Krylov
- Euphorbia subcordata var. eriophylla (Kar. & Kir.) Boiss.
- Galarhoeus caesius (Kar. & Kir.) Hurus.
- Galarhoeus esula f. caesius (Kar. & Kir.) Hurus.
- Galarhoeus esula f. humilior (C.A.Mey.) Hurus.
- Tithymalus caesius (Kar. & Kir.) Klotzsch & Garcke
Sourcesevery claim on this page
- World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
- iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
- Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.
We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.