Exploration of the spurge family Euphorbiaceae

Botanists who are concerned with this family look at it as quite a hodgepodge. Scientists use a term polyphyletic to describe the hodgepodge situation, whereas other groups of plants even if they seem quite diverse have derived from a common ancestor, thus being monophyletic. We are pulling together our thoughts to include all the different groups of spurges that we are aware of and use for medicinal purposes, food, forage, as ornamental plants, production of rubber, and even as benchmarks for land survey.
To continue with Euphorbiaceae we are first going to discuss what was the genus Phyllanthus, now arisen to its own family. The choice of the name Phyllanthus was made by Linnaeus in 1737. The name Phyllanthus comes from Greek meaning leaf-flower. The tiny leaves are placed uniformly along the stem, which is slightly arched. At first it looks like a single leaf with many leaflets, but close observation shows that it is composed of one leaf per very short node. I think that a word "Phyllanthus" is an appropriate name. At each tiny node a single short stem forms pendulous flower to be followed by a round fruit, composed of 3 carpels and each carpel contains 2 seeds, rather than one as found in Euphorbiaceae. The seeds were dispersed from a mature fruit and they germinated, even though when I first acquired this plant its natural germination occurred around the original plant indicating the high degree of self-fertility. When I was in Thailand I had the opportunity to eat the fruit of Phyllanthus, it was very pleasant as a fresh fruit. The family Phyllanthaceae was described in 2006, but starting from 1993 there were evidences that it should be separated from Euphorbiaceae.
To be continued...

A new twist on Curcurbits

My first experience was about 40 years ago: we were raising in my garden a variety of Curcubit called spaghetti squash. The plant was destroyed by a gopher, which ate the root. And there were all those half-developed squash going to waste. So, we cooked one up as if it were a zucchini and it turned out delicious, and we and our neighbors consumed all of that. Recently the "record" was played over again: a vigorous pumpkin vine volunteered in our orchard and some of the vines were climbing high into our avocados and citrus trees, and beginning to bear fruit. One half-developed fruit was accidentally broken and found on the ground. Subsequently we sauteed it and to our amazement it was more delicious then any zucchini we have ever eaten. It may be possible that other immature pumpkins would also provide a delicious food, but we don't know. So we will retain seeds from mature fruit of our volunteer plant for next years trials.