Euphorbia gramineaJacq.

grassleaf spurge

WFO wfo-0000962344 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Euphorbia graminea, photographed by Josiah Londerée
fig. a Josiah Londerée, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-29 / obs. 192581870

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 26 botanical countries

Regions where Euphorbia graminea is native: Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Argentina Northwest, Aruba, Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Honduras, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panamá, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela, Windward Is. Mexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NortheastMexico NorthwestMexico SoutheastMexico SouthwestArgentina NorthwestBelizeBoliviaColombiaCosta RicaCubaDominican RepublicEcuadorEl SalvadorFrench GuianaGuatemalaHondurasNicaraguaPanamáPeruSurinameVenezuela ArubaNetherlands AntillesWindward Is.
Native distribution of Euphorbia graminea, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Argentina Northwest AGW SOUTHERN AMERICA
Aruba ARU
Belize BLZ
Bolivia BOL
Colombia CLM
Costa Rica COS
Cuba CUB
Dominican Republic DOM
Ecuador ECU
El Salvador ELS
French Guiana FRG
Guatemala GUA
Honduras HON
Netherlands Antilles NLA
Nicaragua NIC
Panamá PAN
Peru PER
Suriname SUR
Venezuela VEN
Windward Is. WIN
Mexico Central MXC NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northeast MXE
Mexico Northwest MXN
Mexico Southeast MXT
Mexico Southwest MXS

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.

Flowering 143 in flower of 168 examined

Proportion of examined Euphorbia graminea in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 11 13 85% 58% to 96%
Feb 10 12 83% 55% to 95%
Mar 11 13 85% 58% to 96%
Apr 9 12 75% 47% to 91%
May 8 8 100% 68% to 100%
Jun 13 14 93% 69% to 99%
Jul 12 16 75% 51% to 90%
Aug 13 14 93% 69% to 99%
Sep 14 17 82% 59% to 94%
Oct 17 19 89% 69% to 97%
Nov 10 11 91% 62% to 98%
Dec 15 19 79% 57% to 91%

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Euphorbia graminea observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 143 of 168 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,007 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 6.1 °C 12.9 °C 21.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.0 °C 30.4 °C 34.6 °C
Annual rainfall 497 mm 1,434 mm 2,852 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 6 mm 150 mm 285 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,007 research-grade observations of Euphorbia graminea 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 46 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.

  • Adenopetalum boerhaviifolium Klotzsch & Garcke
  • Adenopetalum discolor Klotzsch & Garcke
  • Adenopetalum ellipticum Klotzsch & Garcke
  • Adenopetalum gramineum (Jacq.) Klotzsch & Garcke
  • Adenopetalum hoffmannii Klotzsch & Garcke
  • Adenopetalum irasuense Klotzsch & Garcke
  • Adenopetalum mexicanum Klotzsch & Garcke
  • Adenopetalum oerstedii Klotzsch & Garcke
  • Adenopetalum pictum Klotzsch & Garcke
  • Adenopetalum pubescens Klotzsch & Garcke
  • Adenopetalum sphaerorhizum Klotzsch & Garcke
  • Adenopetalum subsinuatum Klotzsch & Garcke
  • Agaloma graminea (Jacq.) D.B.Ward
  • Aklema elliptica (Klotzsch & Garcke) Millsp.
  • Aklema nudiflora (Lam.) Raf.
  • Anisophyllum mexicanum Klotzsch & Garcke
  • Eumecanthus boerhaviifolius (Klotzsch & Garcke) Millsp.
  • Eumecanthus colimae (Rose) Millsp.
  • Eumecanthus discolor (Klotzsch & Garcke) Millsp.
  • Eumecanthus gramineus (Jacq.) Millsp.
  • Eumecanthus hoffmannii (Klotzsch & Garcke) Millsp.
  • Eumecanthus mexicanus Millsp.
  • Eumecanthus pedunculosus (A.Rich.) Millsp.
  • Eumecanthus pubescens (Klotzsch & Garcke) Millsp.

and 22 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.