Euphorbia balsamifera Aiton.
Euphorbia capazzii Caballero
Eng.: Balsam Spurge, sweet tabaiba. Spa.: Tabaiba dulce. Fre.: Euphorbe. Ara.: Salane, afdir, lfernan, afernane, agoua, ivernan (Hassanía). Tamahaq: Theghal, taghaelt.
Shrub, usually monoecious, up to 1 m in height, sometimes up to 1.6 m. Trunk promptly branched, sometimes from the base, often giving the plant a hemispheric shape; rarely the trunk is branched above several decimetres, resembling a miniature tree. Branches thickened (12-30 mm in diameter). Brownish bark on older stems and branches, grey-brown to reddish in younger parts. This species has characteristic acute terminal buds. The upper branches are 2-10(15) cm long, succulent. Stem leaves 14.1–44.9(50) × 2.9–10(12) mm, lanceolate to acute, with non-wavy margin, slightly mucronate (0.3–0.6mm long) or without mucron, subsessile, grouped at the terminal end of the twigs, very quickly deciduous. Inflorescence with a single cyathium with bracts similar to the leaves, but slightly smaller. Cyathium (2-3.5 × 3.5 mm) dioecious, with a very short peduncle; nectaries suborbicular, entire, not appendiculate, yellow. Male cyatius without ovary or with ovary but very rudimentary. Fruit a subglobose capsule (7-9 × 8-11 mm), almost sessile, with very short peduncle (0.5-1.5 mm), with cocci poorly defined, covered with a dense pubescence that is lost when mature. Each coccus carries 1 seed (3-3.5(4) × 2.5-3 × 2.7-3 mm) oval-subglobose, with a smooth surface, reddish-yellowish, without caruncula.
Flowering:
March to May.
Fruiting:
April to July.
Habitat:
Sandy and rocky-sandy soils, in small dunes where the roots of the plant can reach the soil. In arid and hyperarid bioclimates.
Distribution:
The Canary Islands (all the islands) and the coastal strip of the African continent closest to the archipelago that goes from Ifni to Cape Bojador.
Observations:
The group (or clade) of the “tabaibas dulces” traditionally composed of E. balsamifera s.l., has recently been divided into 3 species. E. balsamifera s.s., the one described above, E. sepium and, with a notable geographical disjunction, E. adenensis Deflers [E. balsamifera subsp. adenensis (Deflers) P.R.O. Bally]. It is a compact shrub, generally less than 1 m tall, which differs from its other two clade partners by its obovate leaves and by having glabrous, rarely glabrescent capsules. It also has a totally different ecology. It inhabits calcareous rocks or gypsum soils in places with sparse vegetation, between 150-1900 altitude. It is distributed in the southernmost portion of the Arabian Peninsula (Oman and Yemen), the island of Abd-al-Kuri (between Socotra and Somalia), northern Somalia, Eritrea, and reaches the area studied here, along the Red Sea, in the coastal mountains of Sudan.
Conservation status:
A relatively rare species but it is not considered threatened. Currently, it has not been assessed at a global level in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. In the Livre Rouge de la flore vasculaire du Maroc (Fennane, 2021) it has been considered as Near Threatened (NT).
Legend:
Euphorbia balsamifera Euphorbia adenensis