Plant of the Week: Toxic plant was well-known to the ancients

Name: Sunspurge (Euphorbia helioscopia)

Otherwise known as: Devil’s Brew, Madwoman’s Milk

Habitat: An annual member of the Euphorbiaceae family, growing up to 50cm in cultivated or open country. Soft, hairless, erect stems bear oval-shaped leaves on branching tops that support small yellow/green flowers which have basal bracts that mimic the flowers but are lighter in colour. All parts are poisonous.

What does it do: All members of this family are toxic and some can produce fatalities in grazing animals and humans. The plant was known to the ancients and used as a topical application for warts and corns, as a purge and an anthelmintic (worm repellent). North African tribes applied the white juice exuded by the plant to arrow and spear heads. Arab beggars would rub the leaves on their skin to induce running ulcers. In Ireland the freshly cut stems were thrown into water courses to stupefy fish, there is no evidence of harm arising from eating them.

At one time it was used to treat dropsy, ear and eye complaints, but this practice was discontinued as the cure proved worse than the affliction. Its main use until the mid 19th century was as a vesicant, an agent applied externally to induce blistering to absorb fluids from joints in cases of housemaid’s knee, gout and swollen ankles. It was claimed to be most effective in treating cases of pleurisy and severe backache.

Euphorbia Maculata was used by the ‘eclectics’, early American settler physicians, to treat cholera, dysentery and diarrhea.

In Spain and Brazil the juice from E.Parviflora is applied to syphilitic ulcers, while in India E. Ligularia is held to be sacred to Munsa, the goddess of serpents, and if the juice from the root is mixed with black pepper it will cure snake-bite.

The plant is very common in Cyprus and is known as ‘galochorton’. Care must be taken in handling it; small children sometimes make posies of it and can suffer severe irritation.

The juice from the plant was mixed with bread in some villages and put down as rat poison.

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