Description
Euphorbia albomarginata is a common ground cover plant, usually growing less than 1/2 in (13 mm) high, with individual plants covering about a square foot, often growing closely and forming mats of vegetation. The flowers of this plant are tiny and edged in white, with a purplish center. It can be found in open fields, on roadsides, or anywhere where the ground is disturbed, including ornamental gravels in suburban yards, where it is considered as a weed.
"Chamaesyce" comes from the Greek word "chame", meaning "on the ground", and "syce" meaning "fig. This refers to the growth pattern of being flattened in all aspects, as if a box had been placed on it, so as to be lying very close to the ground. One of the defining chaparral plants, Chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum), derives from the same word.
The flower has a circular burgundy center with a white ring around it. "Albomarginata" refers to the "white" ringed "margin" of the flower "petals". The plant actually has no petals, but has modified leaves called (bracts, more round that the green leaves on the rest of the plant, which form a cuplike shape. Albumin is the reflected "white" light (origninally, but now refers to "all" light) reflected from planets or other celestial bodies which is used in spectroscopy to infer chemical composition about the atmosphere and body's surface. The 12-30 male flowers are difficult to see, consisting only of one stamen each, and are clustered in the center of the cup. The single female flower is at the center, with an elevated ovary pendant on a long stalk, which when fertalized and mature, bears a capsule fruit, and so the name "syce" ("fig").
The leaves are round to heart shaped with the point of the heart away (ovoid) from the small stem attaching the leave to the branch (petiole). The "nonflower leaves" are a peculiar "dusty green", with green but sometimes with burgundyish edges, and burgundyish stems, similar in color to the flower center inside the white ring, and particularly so after a late Spring or Summer rain.
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