Euphorbia antiquorum
Niwadung
Description:
Euphorbia antiquorum "Euphorbia of the Ancients" is a species of plant in the Euphorbiaceae family. It is the type species, and is closely related to Euphorbia pulcherrima, the Poinsettia. Ancients Euphorbias are succulent plants, and they are also called “Antique Spurge” Euphorbia is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Euphorbiaceous. Consisting of 2008 species, Euphorbia is the fourth largest genus of flowering plants; it also has one of the largest ranges of chromosome counts, along with Rumex and Senecio. Members of the family and genus are commonly referred to as spurges. Euphorbia antiquorum is the type species for the genus Euphorbia; it was described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 in Species Plantarum
Other Uses
Several spurges are grown as garden plants, among them Poinsettia (E. pulcherrima) and the succulent E. trigona. E. pekinensis is used in traditional Chinese medicine, where it is regarded as one of the 50 fundamental herbs. Several Euphorbia species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), like the Spurge Hawk-moths (Hyles euphorbiae and Hyles tithymali), as well as the Giant Leopard Moth. The diterpenoid ingenol is the core structure of a topical drug recently commercialized to treat actinic keratosis, a precancerous skin condition. It is produced by the Euphorbia plants.
Systematic and Taxonomy
According to recent studies of DNA, sequence data,most of the smaller "satellite genera" around the huge genus Euphorbia nest deep within the latter. Consequently these taxa, namely the never generally accepted genus Chamaesyce as well as the smaller genera Cubanthus, Elaeophorbia, Endadenium, Monadenium, Synadenium and Pedilanthus were transferred to Euphorbia. The entire subtribe Euphorbiinae now consists solely of the genus Euphorbia.
General Uses
