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FAMILY EUPHORBIACEAE HABIT: The plant is mostly shrubs or trees and rarely herbs such as Phyllanthus and Euphorbia. Several species of Euphorbia are cactus-like inhabit with thick and fleshy stem and the leaves are reduced to spines. The plants after contain a milky latex in special laticiferous vessels.

LEAVES: it is usually simple, entire or sometimes deeply pal match lobed as in Ricinus and Jatropha. The stipules are usually present and in Jatropha they are represented by ciliate glands.

INFLORESCENCE: It is complex and is mixed cyme. In Euphorbia, it is a cyathium which appears as a single flower. Each cyathium had a cup-shaped fleshy involucre formed by nectar glands. In the middle of the cyathium is a single female flower represented only by a tricarpellary gynoecium borne on a long pedicel. The female flower is surrounded by five groups of male flowers arranged in monochasial scorpioid cymes. Each male flower is represented by single stamen.

FLOWERS: They are regular, incomplete, unisexual, actinomorphic hypogynous.

CLAYX AND CAROLLA: In Croton, the calyx and corolla are present in the male flower whereas the corolla is absent in the female. In Manihot the calyx becomes petaloid. In Ricinus, the male flower has five sepals and female only three. Aestivation is valvate or imbricate.

ANDROECIUM: The number of stamens ranges from one to infinity. In Euphorbia, it is one, in Breynia it is three, in Phyllanthus it is five, in Acalypha, it is eight, in Jatropha it is ten, in Crozophora it is fifteen, in Mercurialis it is twenty, in Croton, it is eighty to hundred. The filament is generally free, in Jatropha and Breynia the filaments are united into a column, in Phyllanthus cyclanther the anther are united to ring situated above a column of fused filament. There is basically five stamen in Ricinus, opposite to the sepals which are much branched and the anther is borne on the ultimate branches.

GYNOECIUM. It is tricarpellary and syngenecious with a superior and trilocular ovary, There are one or two pendulous ovules in each locule and the placentation is axile, style is three, often bifid.

FRUIT: A trilocular schizocarpic capsule splitting into three one seeded Cocci- Rehma. Seeds are wit fleshy endosprema. The seeds are often with a conspicuous carunele- (a fleshy outgrowth from the micropyle).