Euphorbia celastroides ('ekoko)

Plate 1 figs. a–f · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 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.

Euphorbia celastroides, photographed by Eric Knight — fig. a Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / 2019-10-25 / obs. 55451991

Euphorbia celastroides, photographed by Sonny Gamponia — fig. b Sonny Gamponia, CC0 1.0 / obs. 32247175

Euphorbia celastroides, photographed by Scott Loarie — fig. d Scott Loarie, CC0 1.0 / obs. 9819086

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 1 botanical country

Native distribution of Euphorbia celastroides, 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
Hawaii	HAW	PACIFIC

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 115 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	18.3 °C	20.7 °C	21.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	24.0 °C	26.4 °C	27.5 °C
Annual rainfall	699 mm	1,689 mm	2,683 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	50 mm	314 mm	540 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 115 research-grade observations of Euphorbia celastroides 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 49 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.

Chamaesyce celastroides (Boiss.) Croizat & O.Deg.
Chamaesyce celastroides var. amplectens (Sherff) O.Deg. & I.Deg.
Chamaesyce celastroides var. hanapepensis (Sherff) O.Deg. & I.Deg.
Chamaesyce celastroides var. kaenana (Sherff) O.Deg. & I.Deg.
Chamaesyce celastroides var. kohalana (O.Deg. & Sherff) O.Deg. & I.Deg.
Chamaesyce celastroides var. laehiensis (O.Deg., O.Deg. & Sherff) Koutnik
Chamaesyce celastroides var. lorifolia (A.Gray ex H.Mann) O.Deg. & I.Deg.
Chamaesyce celastroides var. nelsonii (H.St.John) V.S.Raju & P.N.Rao
Chamaesyce celastroides var. saxicola (O.Deg. & Sherff) O.Deg. & I.Deg.
Chamaesyce celastroides var. stokesii (C.N.Forbes) O.Deg. & I.Deg.
Chamaesyce celastroides var. tomentella (Boiss.) Koutnik
Chamaesyce celastroides var. waikoluensis (Sherff) O.Deg. & I.Deg.
Chamaesyce lorifolia (Hillebr.) Croizat & O.Deg.
Euphorbia annulata Nutt. ex Sherff
Euphorbia celastroides var. amplectens Sherff
Euphorbia celastroides var. arenisaxosa H.St.John
Euphorbia celastroides var. halawana Sherff
Euphorbia celastroides var. hanapepensis Sherff
Euphorbia celastroides var. haupuana Sherff
Euphorbia celastroides var. humbertii Sherff
Euphorbia celastroides var. ingrata O.Deg. & Sherff
Euphorbia celastroides var. kaenana Sherff
Euphorbia celastroides var. kealiana Sherff
Euphorbia celastroides var. kohalana Sherff

and 25 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.
USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol CHCE. public domain. 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.