The tiny yellow flower is so seductive in bloom. The beauty, however, is a scourge in disguise. When the plant turns fiery red, Shangri-la, a tourist attraction in Southwest China's Yunnan Province, harvests a nightmare.

Despite its charming beauty, the plant is known among the locals as "langdu" - literally wolf poison, belonging to the euphorbia fischeriana family. "It's a ferocious killer in disguise. Its appearance signals the degrading of meadows, the degradation, in return, fans its growth because the plant flourishes in dry environs. Hence a vicious cycle is set in motion." warns a botanist of Zhongdian County, now named Shangri-la after the Utopia described by James Hilton in his novel Lost Horizon.