Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Plural form of spurge.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Euphorbia includes rhizomatous weeds of grainfields (the spurges), large shrubs like Poinsettia, small bushes (crown of thorns) and cactus-like forms.

    Mammalian Macroevolution Muddle - The Panda's Thumb 2007

  • Then there were six-legged dogs, offoxes, cantileps and spurges.

    Dinosaur Planet McCaffrey, Anne 1978

  • Here and there a solitary tree rose to break the gently rolling monotony of the veldt: spiny acacias, sword-leaved dragon trees, emerald-spired lobelias, and thick-fingered, poisonous spurges.

    Conan of Cimmeria Howard, Robert E. 1969

  • In northern countries the plants are mostly small weeds, of which the various spurges or _Euphorbias_ are the most familiar.

    Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany For High Schools and Elementary College Courses Douglas Houghton Campbell

  • In the spurges, as in the other members of the order, the flowers are very simple, being often reduced to a single stamen or pistil (Fig.  109, _M_, _N_).

    Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany For High Schools and Elementary College Courses Douglas Houghton Campbell

  • These neglected spots are overgrown with gorse, brambles, nettles, blackthorn, and mullein, as well as with the bitter spurges, and the stringy inedible bracken.

    Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 Charles Herbert Sylvester

  • Upon the burning banks of broken rock -- gray wastes sprinkled with small spurges and tufts of the fragrant southernwood, now opening its mean little flowers -- multitudes of flying grasshoppers flutter, most of them with scarlet wings, and one marvels how they can keep themselves from being baked quite dry where every stone is hot.

    Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine Edward Harrison Barker 1885

  • We left the fertile valley and rose upon the stone-scattered _causse_ where hellebore, spurges, and juniper were the only plants not cropped close to the earth by the flocks of sheep which thrive upon these wastes.

    Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine Edward Harrison Barker 1885

  • Tall woody spurges two feet high or more, with tufts of dusty green leaves, managed to draw, however, abundant moisture from the waste, as the milk that gushed from the smallest wound attested.

    Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine Edward Harrison Barker 1885

  • Then there are patches of candytuft running from white into pink, crimson flowers of the little crane's-bill, and spurges whose floral leaves are now losing their golden green and taking a hue of fiery brown.

    Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine Edward Harrison Barker 1885

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