Euphorbia milii

Zones: 9,10 and warmer; indoor plant colder areas. Small 1½-2 inch light green leaves. Clustered pairs of bright red bracts bloom nearly all year. Outdoors will grow to 3-4 feet; indoor slow growth to 2½ feet. Trim to keep shorter. Several plants make an attractive flowering Bonsai forest. Thorns are sharp; use leather gloves when handling. Let go slightly dry between waterings then soak well. Half strength fertilizer monthly when blooming. Not fussy about location but likes some sun daily. Will take mild frost, but best kept indoors before freezing weather starts. Shipping size: 4-6 inches.

Can be grown outside with protection from extreme sun and from frost. Likes to be watered in Summer. Full Sun to Light Shade. Variety of Colors. Indoor. Light/Bright Shade.

A profusion of bright red blooms are borne practically throughout the year on this reliable and durable cactus-like plant. A dense branching growth habit creates a solid mass of foliage and blooms at maturity.The Crown of Thorns is a heat loving cactus-like succulent that is extremely easy to grow and will provide months of color with it's long-lasting colorful flower-like bracts. This durable and reliable Poinsettia cousin will revel in full sun or will be perfectly happy in light shade on the porch or patio. The Crown of Thorns is at home in containers indoors or out and is an excellent choice for well-drained gardens and xeriscaping. Drought tolerant, salt tolerant, and deer resistant. Excellent drainage is probably the most important factor for being successful with this plant.

Euphorbia is a large genus, with about 2,000 species and a bewildering array of forms. Some are pernicious weeds with tiny leaves, while others are shrubby or even grow to be impressive trees. A significant number of them are succulent, though these constitute a minority of the species in the genus. The succulent types are particularly concentrated in Africa, and eastward to Madagascar and India. Even among this subset of the genus, there are many different groups whose appearance varies radically. One group of horticultural interest is known as “crown-of-thorns”, consisting of Euphorbia milii and its close relatives. These natives of Madagascar have very spiny succulent stems and non-succulent leaves. Euphorbias have a unique cup-like structure which holds the flowers and also has glands and appendages which are of great use in differentiating similar species. This flower-bearing structure is called a cyathium, and though each one is not large, they can be showy if they are present in large numbers. In some species, the prominence of the flowers is greatly enhanced by colorful bracts (actually modified leaves surrounding the flowers), and the poinsettia is a well-known example of this. A crown-of-thorns also has showy bracts, and though these are not as large as those of a poinsettia they are similarly colored in shades of red, pink, white, pale yellow and salmon. Euphorbia milii is a woody shrub, and different forms of it vary in size from a foot tall to over 4 feet (30 cm to well over a meter). In nature, the usual color for the pair of rounded bracts around the flowers is vivid red, but selection and hybridization have resulted in a range of different colors on cultivated plants. Though this species is not very cold-tolerant, we are able to grow it in the ground at the Ruth Bancroft Garden with the help of a protective cover placed over it in winter. The flowers with their scarlet bracts are very freely produced, and are present for much of the year.