ritchie's spurge

order: malpighiales
family: euphorbiaceae
genus: euphorbia
species: ritchiei

First Story

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10 august 2013

Finally another post of a spurge, a new spurge in my collection. I call it golem because of its look, but really you can call it Ritchie's spurge, because a guy called Ritchie must have been the first person to have found it. This spurge grows pretty fast and likes to branch out everywhere. For all I've observed for the 2 months it's been with me, those branches are short and fat. They bear succulent leaves but drop them if it's too hot. As I bought it, it was in a small round plastic pot which was pressed into oval shape by several emerging basal shoots. I had to act immediately and repotted it in fear that those young shoots could be damaged from too much pressure. There's a hexagonal ceramic pot that's lying vacant somewhere in the garden, so it's now the new home for this spurge. It looks a little bit oversized at the moment, but I'm pretty sure that in no time, this golem is going to be in need of an even bigger home.

Update

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26 april 2016

pot has become too small. right before transplant.

It's been nearly 3 years! I didn't realise this spurge has been with me for this long until I started to write this update. Talking about "long"... Its main stem has become so long that my visitors have been complaining about it being vulgar. This is certainly not what I expected when I got it. After some online research I knew I could expect a rounded cushion with pink flowers all over it, such as this example and this example. But it's just not happening yet.

The plant grew rather fast at the beginning with lots of new basal shoots and some branching. But I had the feeling that growth nearly came to a stand still last year, which is why I decided it's time to transplant it into a bigger pot. I have an exact same hexagonal one, only 3 times as big, that became available recently. So I conveniently made the decision to use it as its future home. During the transplant, I realised the rootball was indeed very small and felt kind of lost in its new home. After gently loosening the twining roots on the surface of the tight rootball, I added a lot of fresh growing medium (as always, good quality, porous mix) around it in order to fill the pot. I hope new roots will fill in and it will regain its vigour soon. When the plant throws out new leaves in the summer, I'll update with another photo.