Euphorbia caput-medusae (Medusa’s head)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Euphorbia caput-medusae, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. a Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-04-30 / obs. 194283642

Euphorbia caput-medusae, photographed by Tim Kirsten — fig. b Tim Kirsten, CC0 1.0 / obs. 189067408

Euphorbia caput-medusae, photographed by Cecile Roux — fig. g Cecile Roux, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 182680142

Euphorbia caput-medusae, photographed by leandra-k_89 — fig. h leandra-k_89, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 166162550

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium: Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession: US 303174
Filed as: Euphorbia macowanii N.E.Br.
Det. by: not recorded on this sheet
Collected: F. R. R. Schlechter 1896-08-05
Origin: ZA
The sheet: View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 2 botanical countries

Native distribution of Euphorbia caput-medusae, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Cape Provinces	CPP	AFRICA
Namibia	NAM

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.

Also published as 27 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.

Dactylanthes tuberculata (Jacq.) Haw.
Euphorbia bolusii N.E.Br.
Euphorbia caput-medusae var. geminata Aiton
Euphorbia caput-medusae var. major Aiton
Euphorbia caput-medusae var. minor Aiton
Euphorbia commelinii DC.
Euphorbia confluens Nel
Euphorbia fructus-pini var. geminata Sweet
Euphorbia fructuspini Mill.
Euphorbia geminata (Ait.) Marloth ex A.C.White, R.A.Dyer & B.Sloane
Euphorbia macowanii N.E.Br.
Euphorbia marlothiana N.E.Br.
Euphorbia marlothii sensu N.E.Br.non Pax
Euphorbia medusae Panz.
Euphorbia medusae Thunb.
Euphorbia muirii N.E.Br.
Euphorbia parvimamma Boiss.
Euphorbia ramiglans N.E.Br.
Euphorbia ramiglans var. confluens (Nel) van Veldh.
Euphorbia tessellata (Haw.) Steud.
Euphorbia tuberculata Jacq.
Euphorbia tuberculata var. macowanii (N.E.Br.) A.C.White, R.A.Dyer & B.Sloane
Euphorbia tuberculatoides N.E.Br.
Medusea fructus-pini Haw.

and 3 more.

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.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.