Euphorbia luridaEngelm.

woodland spurge

WFO wfo-0000963140 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Euphorbia lurida, photographed by Trevor Van Loon
fig. a Trevor Van Loon, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-24 / obs. 191069336
Euphorbia lurida, photographed by Mike Dechter
fig. b Mike Dechter, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 137376151
Euphorbia lurida, photographed by Shawn O'Donnell
fig. c Shawn O'Donnell, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 129554543
Euphorbia lurida, photographed by Eric Knight
fig. d Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 93050812
Euphorbia lurida, photographed by desertnaturalist
fig. e desertnaturalist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 77112745
Euphorbia lurida, photographed by Krista Maxwell
fig. f Krista Maxwell, CC0 1.0 / obs. 73501032
Euphorbia lurida, photographed by Adam J. Searcy
fig. g Adam J. Searcy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 96383261
Euphorbia lurida, photographed by Adam J. Searcy
fig. h Adam J. Searcy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 96383445

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 6 botanical countries

Regions where Euphorbia lurida is native: Arizona, California, Mexico Northwest, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah ArizonaCaliforniaMexico NorthwestNevadaNew MexicoUtah
Native distribution of Euphorbia lurida, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Arizona ARI NORTHERN AMERICA
California CAL
Mexico Northwest MXN
Nevada NEV
New Mexico NWM
Utah UTA

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 375 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -7.1 °C -2.3 °C 1.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.5 °C 28.3 °C 30.2 °C
Annual rainfall 334 mm 375 mm 624 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 15 mm 26 mm 64 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 375 research-grade observations of Euphorbia lurida 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 9 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 lurida var. pringlei Norton
  • Euphorbia palmeri Engelm. ex S.Watson
  • Euphorbia palmeri var. peplofolia (Engelm.) Norton
  • Euphorbia palmeri var. subpubens (Engelm. ex S.Watson) L.C.Wheeler
  • Euphorbia peplofolia Engelm.
  • Euphorbia subpubens Engelm. ex S.Watson
  • Tithymalus luridus (Engelm.) Wooton & Standl.
  • Tithymalus palmeri (Engelm. ex S.Watson) Dayton
  • Tithymalus subpubens (Engelm.) Norton

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol EUPA4. public domain. 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.