I just got these 2. The first has a lot of stems , all 4 sided, about 6 to 10 inches tall, and a litle over an inch in diameter.
The next is about 8 inches tall, and very striking in its markings, but I haven't found one in the Succ dictionary. It has 6 thin ribs and 2 spines per areole - is that the correct term for a euphorbia?
Thanks Mike, and no the cacti don't give me a headache despite the assortment of aspirin in the picture.
Don't know the species off the top of my head, will do some checking though.
Regarding your question as to whether the area where the spines protrude is called the areole. No it isn't. Areoles are unique to cacti and this is in fact what denotes a true cacti from other succulents.
In succulents that have spines that area is commonly called the spine pad.
Mike, I think Dominique's call for your first plant resinifera is a good one. I am not too sure about the second one. There are a lot of species with the 'milky' markings on them. knobelii is a reasonable choice, but I'm not convinced on that one. Heterochroma is another possibility, but there are many more that are very similar.
The other is hard, as you surmise. what surprises me is that most euphorbias with vertical markings have a three bands - say a single light band down the middle and then dark bands on either side to the end of the rib. This one, however, has 5 bands - white then green and then white again to the end of the ribs.
The only information I have got is that it is a spine pad.
Confinalis is an extremely large species (tree proportions), so I would not think your plant is that species. The Euphorbias are if anything more difficult to ID correctly than the Mammillarias, purely because of the number of species. I do know many of them, but it is impossible to keep a mental picture of them all in your head.
Whatever the name of this plant is, it is beautiful. It indeed looks very much like euphorbia confinalis ssp rhodesica. I have found another one E. confinalis ssp confinalis which is all green and as big as a house.
When I googled confinalis, I found some similar pictures of small ones, also one in Succ. Dic. II. ALso found a cactus newsletter where the description matched - it said every confinalis was differetnt in its markings as seedlings.
Mike
Last edited by Mike on Fri Jan 20, 2006 7:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Okay, I too confirm Euphorbia confinalis ssp. rhodesica.
There are currently two recognized subspecies: rhodesica and confinalis.
Confinalis often has "leaves", is often very light coloured, and has lots of "stems" on an early age. Rhodesica tends to develop these at later age (20 years). The older spines of this subspecies mostly are black.
Confinalis has 5-6 ribs, the paired spines grow to be one centimeter in length. It flowers at later age.
This subspecies comes from Zimbabwe, while confinalis has a much larger natural growing area: from Transvaal to Mozambique.
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