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Euphorbiaceae family

Pascuita Euphorbia leucocephala

Pascuita is an introduced perennial tree, found in Puerto Rico. It grows to 7 ft.

More about this plant

Euphorbia leucocephala, with many common names including little Christmas flower, white lace euphorbia, snow bush, snow flake, snows of Kilimanjaro and white Christmas bush is a species of plant in the family Euphorbiaceae. It is endemic to Mexico and Mesoamerica, and a relative of the poinsettia. Its clear sap is an irritant that can cause blisters and skin rashes. Ingesting it can cause vomiting and diarrhea. Wikipedia →

⚠ Invasive here — plant a native instead USDA + GBIF

Pascuita is flagged invasive in the U.S. These natives fill a similar niche — same growth habit, bloom season, height, and region — so you keep the look and feed local wildlife instead of spreading a problem.

Caper
Native
Caper
Capparis baducca
●●●●○
Diamondleaf Willow
Native
Diamondleaf Willow
Salix planifolia
●●●●●
American Black Elderberry (subsp. canadensis)
Native
American Black Elderberry (subsp. canadensis)
Sambucus nigra subsp. canadensis
●●●○○
Southern Cattail
Native
Southern Cattail
Typha domingensis
●●○○○
Matched on growth habit · bloom months · mature height · shared U.S. range (USDA + GBIF) — a starting point, not a prescription.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height · Foliage
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Height
7 ft
Lifespan
Perennial
Foliage
Deciduous/evergreen broadleaf
In the garden
Shrub layer — Sits in the shrub of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~7 caterpillar species

Euphorbia supports ~7 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a modest genus.

Recorded feeding on Euphorbia in North America, including:

Chamaesphecia empiformis · clearwing moth Chamaesphecia tenthrediniformis · clearwing moth Cydia deshaisiana · Jumping Bean Moth Danaus plexippus · Monarch Episimus argutana · leafroller moth Erinnyis ello · Ello Sphinx
+ 8 more species →
Erinnyis obscura · Obscure Sphinx Ethelgoda texanana · leafroller moth Eudryas unio · Pearly Wood-Nymph Hyles euphorbiae · Spurge Hawk-Moth Hypercompe scribonia · Giant Leopard Moth Lobesia euphorbiana · leafroller moth Lobocleta perirrorata · geometer (inchworm) moth Lobocleta plemyraria · Straight-Lined Wave Moth
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees specialist-bee host

Specialist native bees depend on it.

Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Euphorbia is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024.
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
Climate niche (heat tolerance & native rainfall) Derived

We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.

Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.

Realized-niche / climate-envelope approach (Pearson & Dawson 2003; Soberón 2007). Climate: NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals (1991–2020).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (14) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — US-RIIS v2.0 (USGS)
[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[08] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[11] Climate niche — Derived — realized climate niche from U.S. county occurrences (GBIF) × NOAA NCEI county climate normals 1991–2020 (public domain)
[12] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[13] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[14] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
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PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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