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The Euphorbia milii is a beautiful flowering plant that balances beauty with terror. While its beauty may attract you, its defence mechanism calls for caution as if it were asking you to admire its beautiful bunch of pink flowers and deep green leaves from a safe distance. With thorns and all, this plant is still beautiful.

The Euphorbia milii is locally known here as the crown-of-thorns, some people call it Christ plant or Christ's thorn, for more information, here is a table that provides a more scientific identification of this beautiful thorny plant that takes centre stage in this post

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Plantae
Clade:	Tracheophytes
Clade:	Angiosperms
Clade:	Eudicots
Clade:	Rosids
Order:	Malpighiales
Family:	Euphorbiaceae
Genus:	Euphorbia
Species:	E. milii

_{^{a closer look at the thorns}}

This plant is highly adapted to dry conditions which makes it drought-tolerant. If planted in a pot and you go on a vacation, it will be alive and well when you come back. A beautiful flower growing on a thorny stem means fewer people will ever want to touch it. But in case you are still insisting on touching it. Note that the white sap from it is a toxic material.

Though this plant may looks very beautiful, it is not that friendly, so avoid the thorns and the sap, which can result in some forms of skin irritation, blistering and itching. Contact with the eyes can be very painful, causing redness and vision problems. If it gets into the mouth, it could result in throat irritation and painful swelling.

I would suggest you keep your kids away from this plant. It is mostly ornamental but appears in traditional medicine, for treating wounds, as an antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory, an area I don't intend to explore in this post.

The plant works as a natural pest control and could be used to keep away snails
Some of them have beautiful white, yellow or orange flowers and most of the time, this plant has few leaves, you would only see the thorny stem and its flowers, no leaves at all.

Some people believe this was the plant that made the thorny crown on Christ's head. I can't say it was with any degree of certainty, but I can assure you it is toxic to dogs, cats and your horses.

_{^{Planted outside a beautiful fence}}

I am inviting you and the following to have your say in the comment section below.

@alexanderpeace, @josepha, @ninapenda, @okere-blessing, @rubee2as1 and @whoever can add value to this post.

Media Credit

Composer	@manuelhooks
Camara man	@manuelhooks
Captured with	Galaxy-A15
Captured Date	Sunday, 14th September
Posting Date	Sunday, 14th September
	(@) 2025

A lot of credit to Lens for providing the help in confirming the identify of this plants.

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/Euphorbia
• https://www.google.com/url?
• https://www.ijpsjournal.com/Euphorbia
• https://www.gardenia.net/euphorbia