spurge family

American  

noun

1. the large plant family Euphorbiaceae, characterized by herbaceous plants, shrubs, and trees having milky juice, simple alternate leaves or no leaves, usually petalless flowers often with showy bracts, and capsular fruit, and including cassava, croton, crown-of-thorns, poinsettia, snow-on-the-mountain, spurge, and the plants that produce castor oil, rubber, and tung oil.

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Example Sentences

Such is the case with the natural order Euphorbiaceæ, or spurge family, to which the tallow-tree of China belongs.

From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 by Chambers, Robert

Kamila, Kamela, ka-mē′la, n. an East Indian orange dye-stuff yielded by a common Madras tree of the spurge family.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 2 of 4: E-M) by Various