if soft, I would say too much water. Don't hold me to that, though.

Euphorbia species, in general in my experience, will be dead and have a funny color when they receive too much water almost overnight!!! They do go semi-dormant with very hot weather so you must cut back a bit on the H2O. Yours looks somewhat sunburned. Normal color is a green plaid.

So I took it off the ground.... the soil was very dry... do you think it will survive? What should I do?

Hard to say. Its color looks good. Remove all dead roots. Place in very gritty mix up to the base of the plant. Water sparingly and see what happens. It will grow new roots or dye. I understand the attachment we have to our plants. E. obesa is readily available at reasonable prices.

Hi Claudita,

I wanted to add that Euphorbia obesa does not stay round. As it grows, it will grow taller, becoming columnar. Also, it looks like you have a male plant. Males produce little yellow flowers while female plants develop "flowers" that look almost like jacks.

Nancy

While trying to enlarge the original picture causes significant loss in visual quality, I believe this plant is female. I think I see stigma rather than anthers even though there is some yellow in the picture. The attached picture is the male cyathia.

This post was edited by bikerdoc5968 on Wed, Jun 25, 14 at 22:01

Thank you for all your help! I think it is a girl... if it doesn't die.. I will buy a boy for her.

Congratulations, it IS a girl! :)

Nancy

Ah, yes a female. I stand corrected. It should be relatively easy to obtain a male.