Candelilla

The Candelilla (Euphorbia antisyphilitica), is a plant found in Mexico, Central America, and the southwestern United States. The name Candelilla means "little candles" because its leafless clusters of stems resemble little candles. The plant is especially useful because its stems are covered in a wax that is collected and used in industry especially for waterproofing.

The milky sap of the plant was widely used in Mexico to fight venereal disease in the early 1800's, thus its strange species name. Plants of the spurge family often have phytotoxins in the sap, some very poisonous, and others innocuous.

The wax is harvested by itinerant workers who collect the stems, then boil them in water with sulphuric acid added to separate the wax and let it rise to the surface where it is skimmed off. The candelilla wax is used to harden other waxes, extend carnauba palm wax, or beeswax, and is even used as food additives and chewing gum binders, along with waterproofing.

The plant is interesting to creationists along with other spurges because it seems to be an example of typology where organisms that are different can have the same key attributes that help them form a type. All the spurge plants, though very different in form, have the same kind of flower, a cyathium inflorescence, flowers that are uniquely similar in all the spurges. This fits well with the concept of a Creator who made many different species all with some of the same elements.