Pencil bush
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Pencil bush ( Euphorbia tirucalli ) |
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| Euphorbia tirucalli | ||||||||||||
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The pencil shrub ( Euphorbia tirucalli ), also milk bush or rubber hedge called, is a plant from the family of the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae). It comes from the tropics of East and South Africa. This species has been naturalized in numerous countries.
description
The pencil bush is a shrub or small tree with pencil-thick, green, smooth, succulent branches that can grow to heights of up to 7 meters or more. It contains a milky juice . The elongated, alternate leaves are 1 to 2.5 cm long and about 3 to 4 mm wide; they usually fall off early. The yellow-green flowers or cyathia are at the ends of the branches.
Small, glabrous and rounded capsule fruits are formed.
The number of chromosomes is 2n = 20.
Distribution and location requirements
The milk bush occurs in arid areas, especially in the savannah , and has little location requirements. It is native to Angola , Congo , Madagascar , Mozambique , Rwanda , South Africa , Swaziland , Tanzania , Zambia ; the species was introduced to Brazil , India , Vietnam , the Philippines and Ghana . With regard to Eritrea , Ethiopia , São Tomé and Príncipe , Somalia and Sudan, it is unclear whether the species is native there or was also introduced.
use
The plant is very fast growing and is used for planting in hedges.
It gained special interest as a "gasoline-producing" species, as it is suitable for the production of fuel. The milk bush produces a toxic milky sap, which can be converted into a liquid similar to petrol with little effort . Melvin Calvin suggested using the milk bush as an oil-producing plant. This use is recommended because the plant can grow on land which is unsuitable for most other crops and therefore does not compete with food production. Calvin estimated that 10 to 50 barrels of oil could be produced per acre . In the 1980s, the Brazilian national oil company Petrobras began experiments based on Calvin's suggestions.
The milk bush is also used in traditional medicine from various cultures. In Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malabar and Malaysia it has been used to fight cancer, tumors and warts, as well as against asthma, cough, earache, neuralgia, rheumatism and toothache.
Taxonomy
Synonyms of Euphorbia tirucalli L. are: Euphorbia laro Drake , Euphorbia media N.E.Br. , Euphorbia rhipsalioides Lem. , Euphorbia rhipsaloides Willd. , Euphorbia suareziana Croizat , Euphorbia tirucalli var. Rhipsaloides (Willd.) Chev.
literature
- Melvin Calvin : pencil bush. In: Die Naturwissenschaften , Vol. 67 (1980), pp. 525-533, ISSN 0028-1042 .
- James Duke : Handbook of Energy Crops . Purdue University, West Lafayette, Va.
- Wolfgang Franke : crop science. Usable crops of the temperate latitudes, subtropics and tropics . 6th, revised and expanded edition. Thieme, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-13-530406-X .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Euphorbia tirucalli at Tropicos.org. In: IPCN Chromosome Reports . Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis
- ↑ https://apiv3.iucnredlist.org/api/v3/taxonredirect/44452 IUCN Red List.
- ↑ http://www.botanik.univie.ac.at/hbv/download/ib_euphorbia_treibstoff.pdf
- ↑ Euphorbia tirucalli. Retrieved September 24, 2017 .
- ↑ Rafaël Govaerts (Ed.): Euphorbia - World Checklist of Selected Plant Families of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Last accessed on May 20, 2017.
