Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Euphorbia oblongata
Common name
Egg-leaf Spurge
Family
Euphorbiaceae
Where found
Garden escape. Sydney area, Blue Mountains, ACT, and Western Slopes. Occasionally elsewhere.
Notes
Introduced shrub or woody perennial herb to about 1 m high. Stems produce a milky exudate when cut or broken. Stems covered in soft hairs. Leaves on the lower parts of the stems alternating up the stems, 2–7 cm long, 6–22 mm wide, hairless, tips blunt to rounded, margins finely toothed on the upper half of the balds, entire in the lower half. Stems divided into 4 or 5 flowering branches with a whorl of stalkless leaves at the base, usually shorter and broader than the lower leaves. Leaves just below the flower clusters similar to the lower leaves, mostly 0.8–2 cm long. Male and female flowers on the same plant. Flowers tiny, with 0 petals, in mixed clusters that look like a single flower, of several male flowers and one female flower. Glands surrounding the flower clusters without appendages. Individual flower clusters single above pairs of leaf-like bracts. Flowering: Spring-Autumn. Seed cases about 3.5 mm long, warty.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Euphorbia~oblongata (accessed 16 April 2021)
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