Caudex Plant Encyclopedia

A small caudex Euphorbia from Madagascar with a plump caudex and small leaves.

An endemic Madagascar species from Bongolava with flat caudex and thin branches.

A rare Euphorbia from southern Madagascar with wavy leaves and flat caudex.

A small Euphorbia with cylindrical leaves and caudex, endemic to Madagascar.

A small Madagascan spurge that spreads by creeping rhizomes and bears rosettes of leaves at the stem tips. Its dark red to green leaves are strongly wavy and crisped, turning coppery in summer.

A Madagascar Euphorbia popular for beautifully patterned leaves and caudex, many leaf variations.

A shrubby Madagascan spurge with slender, densely spiny branches, narrow leaves and small flowers with orange-red bracts below the branch tips. It looks like a miniature crown-of-thorns.

A Madagascar Euphorbia with white trunk and small round leaves, bonsai-like appearance.

A small southern African spurge whose twisting tuberous caudex sends up many slender three- to four-angled branches striped grey-green. Tough and easy to root from cuttings, it is a good first caudiciform Euphorbia.

A Euphorbia with a Pachypodium-like columnar stem topped by large leaves, glaucous blue-green above and red-violet beneath. Flowers wrapped in dark purple bracts open before the leaves.

A Madagascar Euphorbia with primrose-like leaves and flat caudex.

A Euphorbia from the Eastern Cape, South Africa, with star-shaped radiating branches from a flat caudex.

A small spurge from south-western Madagascar with a rounded corky caudex, short fat branches and rosettes of crinkled leaves like those of E. decaryi. It forms a bonsai-like plant about 20 cm tall.

A small spurge from south-eastern Madagascar whose half-buried round caudex, about 6 cm across, sends out slender leaning branches set with small whitish bumps. White to cream flowers keep opening for several months.

Known in Japan as Tekkoumaru. A South African spurge whose brown stem, patterned with neat spiralling leaf scars like a pine cone, is topped by a tuft of long willow-like leaves. CITES Appendix I since March 2026.

A South African spurge whose thick carrot-shaped tuber sends up a clump of three-angled branches that twist into tight spirals. The angles bear sharp spines up to 2.5 cm long.