Euphorbia palustrisL.

Marsh Spurgemarsh spurge

WFO wfo-0000963795 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Euphorbia palustris, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. a Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205255588

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
4047452
Filed as
Euphorbia palustris L.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

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 37 botanical countries

Regions where Euphorbia palustris is native: Altay, Kazakhstan, Krasnoyarsk, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, West Siberia, Xinjiang, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine AltayKazakhstanKrasnoyarskNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeWest SiberiaXinjiangAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyNetherlandsNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine
Native distribution of Euphorbia palustris, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Netherlands NET
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Kazakhstan KAZ
Krasnoyarsk KRA
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
West Siberia WSB
Xinjiang CHX

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 92 in flower of 123 examined

Proportion of examined Euphorbia palustris in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 2 2 too few examined
Apr 30 33 91% 76% to 97%
May 48 65 74% 62% to 83%
Jun 11 15 73% 48% to 89%
Jul 0 3 too few examined
Aug 0 1 too few examined
Sep 0 1 too few examined
Oct 1 3 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Euphorbia palustris 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. 92 of 123 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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 977 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -12.8 °C -3.1 °C 0.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.2 °C 24.5 °C 29.5 °C
Annual rainfall 443 mm 641 mm 986 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 77 mm 114 mm 181 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 977 research-grade observations of Euphorbia palustris 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 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 altissima var. nuda Velen.
  • Euphorbia brachiata Jan
  • Euphorbia palustris f. maritima Sennen
  • Euphorbia palustris var. angustifolia Pers.
  • Euphorbia palustris var. brinonense N.Cezard
  • Euphorbia sauliana Boreau ex Boiss.
  • Galarhoeus palustris (L.) Haw.
  • Tithymalus fruticosus Gilib.
  • Tithymalus palustris (L.) Garsault

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.