Euphorbia segetalisL.

grainfield spurge

WFO wfo-0000964645 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Euphorbia segetalis, photographed by Mehdi Chetibi
fig. a Mehdi Chetibi, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-24 / obs. 190459811

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
785277
Filed as
Euphorbia segetalis L.
Det. by
M. H. Mayfield 1998-01-01
Collected
See Collection Notes 1877-06-23
Origin
US
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 21 botanical countries

Regions where Euphorbia segetalis is native: Algeria, Azores, Canary Is., Madeira, Morocco, Türkiye, Albania, Baleares, Corse, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kriti, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Switzerland AlgeriaMoroccoTürkiyeAlbaniaCorseFranceGreeceHungaryItalyKritiNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalRomaniaSiciliaSpainSwitzerland AzoresCanary Is.MadeiraBalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Euphorbia segetalis, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Baleares BAL
Corse COR
France FRA
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Azores AZO
Canary Is. CNY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR
Türkiye TUR ASIA-TEMPERATE

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 159 in flower of 201 examined

Proportion of examined Euphorbia segetalis in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 21 24 88% 69% to 96%
Feb 24 36 67% 50% to 80%
Mar 28 34 82% 66% to 92%
Apr 23 26 88% 71% to 96%
May 22 25 88% 70% to 96%
Jun 9 13 69% 42% to 87%
Jul 3 4 too few examined
Aug 4 4 too few examined
Sep 5 9 56% 27% to 81%
Oct 5 9 56% 27% to 81%
Nov 6 7 86% 49% to 97%
Dec 9 10 90% 60% to 98%

Peak flowering in Dec. Each bar is the share of Euphorbia segetalis 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. 159 of 201 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 2 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 1,125 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 1.4 °C 5.3 °C 12.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.7 °C 27.0 °C 30.7 °C
Annual rainfall 304 mm 686 mm 1,167 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 5 mm 70 mm 149 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,125 research-grade observations of Euphorbia segetalis 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 44 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.

  • Esula pinea (L.) Fourr.
  • Esula segetalis (L.) Haw.
  • Euphorbia artaudiana DC.
  • Euphorbia caespitosa Ten.
  • Euphorbia calcarea Coss. & Durieu ex Coss.
  • Euphorbia congesta Willd.
  • Euphorbia coscinosperma Rchb.
  • Euphorbia diversifolia Hochst. ex Boiss.
  • Euphorbia esula var. taurica Besser
  • Euphorbia humbertiana Maire
  • Euphorbia linifolia L.
  • Euphorbia litoralis Noë ex Nyman
  • Euphorbia longibracteata DC.
  • Euphorbia longiradiata Lapeyr.
  • Euphorbia miricornis Maire & Wilczek
  • Euphorbia pinea L.
  • Euphorbia portlandica subsp. tetraceras (Lange) Nyman
  • Euphorbia ragusana Rchb.
  • Euphorbia segetalis f. robusta Sennen
  • Euphorbia segetalis prol. pinea (L.) Rouy
  • Euphorbia segetalis subsp. linifolia (Nathh.) Oudejans
  • Euphorbia segetalis subsp. pinea (L.) H.J.Coste
  • Euphorbia segetalis subsp. pinea (L.) Hayek
  • Euphorbia segetalis var. longibracteata (DC.) Boiss.

and 20 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.