PlantFiles: Gopher Spurge, Caper Spurge, Mole Plant, Myrtle Spurge
Euphorbia lathyris

Be very careful! The note about the sap being toxic is not an understatement. The story of my experience with this plant is below.

After carefully tending to this plant when it volunteered in my garden, I had six foot tall spiky plants that looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss illustration, stalks were about the diameter of a quarter. I knew nothing regarding their purported mole deterrent properties, but thought they were a really cool looking mystery plant. After a heavy rain late in the season, they fell over, and I pulled them out. This is where things went very, very, wrong.

They were very large and I had to cut them down to fit them in the yard debris. Cutting with garden shears caused an explosion of milky sap. I got a face full of it, and in my eyes, and it's very hard to wash off Soap and water won't remove it. After my eyes swelled shut and 20 or 30 minutes of running my head under a tap didn't help the burning, I ended up in the emergency room, where they had to flush my eyes repeatedly and fill me full of steroids. Also, I looked like I'd been in a bar fight for *days* afterwards.

It's a pretty plant, but it is invasive (the following year, I was pulling the seedlings constantly), and if it's watered well it will explode when broken with any force. Wear eye protection at the least...and a hockey mask probably also wouldn't hurt. Don't let kids touch it.

This plant (gopher spurge) has been growing in my vegetable garden for years (15-20). Grows like a weed, self propagating, rototill in the fall and they just keep coming back. This year is first in memory when I had plants with obvious seedheads, half are brown and dry the rest are green and leak white latex (poisonous I assume), I quit picking the green ones. Oh yeah, haven't had any gophers/moles since second or third year of planting orignal specimens.

I grow this plant just because it stays green, zone 5, in our winters. It is just one more thing to look at that is not gray or brown.

After living with this plant in my yard for six years in Portland, OR, I can honestly say that I never had trouble with moles. To be fair, though, it is important to note that it came with the house; I didn't plant it in response to a mole problem. Perhaps a previous owner did?

The plant required very little care, and spread quickly throughout the yard (along with the arum italicum and deadly nightshade). No maintenance required.

I first noticed gopher spurge growing on a road embankment near my house. The red stem and the white-veined leaves looked attractive so I have potted a specimen. I live in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

I have grown this plant for about 6 years now and its effecttiveness in keeping gophers away has been pretty poor. Though I haven't actually seen gophers eat this plant, they have eaten bananas only 6" away from several large specimens. This plant is a self seeder and in my experience only lives for about 2-3 years max, at which time it gets suddenly huge, flowers and the next thing you know it's popping up everywhere. I let it do this in the hopes that maybe then the gophers would take off, but nothing of the sort. Oh well. Not a bad looking plant and pretty easy to pull out of the ground if it's not growing where you want it, but it IS invasive.

Probably all Euphorbias are to some extent gopher retardents in that they have toxic roots. I have had gophers, though, just dig around my Euphorbias and happily munch a palm or tropical right nearby. I have found road flares are much more effective in chasing them away than planting Euphorbias (though I won't stop planting Euphorbias).

My first experience with the "gopher plant" was after it had been planted in my mother's small backyard garden around the borders. The gopher problem quickly disappeared, and I believe the number of plants used was only 4, one on each side of the rectangular yard.

I later recommended this plant to a vineyard owner who was also having gopher problems in his small personal garden-about 30'x40'. When I asked him about the effectiveness of the 4 plants that I had dug up from my mother's yard, he responded that it had apparently worked, as he too had had no further problems with gophers since planting the 'gopher plants' I had given him. This is only two trials of the effectiveness of this plant in eradicating gopher problems, but so far the plant has been 100% effective in our experience.
-Robert Burns, Napa,California
11-14-2003

Although this is often marketed as a pocket gopher control, it would only work if the gopher actually CONSUMED in large quantities the roots/leaves/stems/seed pods as he busily burrows through the root ball in search of Hybrid tea roses or other tastier morsels in your garden.