The continuous crackling of the bursting seed-vessels on a hot, sunny July day is readily noticeable. They burst with a sharp report when the seeds are ripe flinging them to a distance by the spring-iike twisting of the valves or sides of the pods. If it grows in wet places, it can develop threefoliate leaves.' The large bright yellow, papilionaceous, fragrant flowers, in bloom from April to July, are borne on axillary footstalks, either solitary or in pairs, and are succeeded by oblong, flattened pods, about 1 1/2 inch long, hairy on the edges, but smooth on the sides. Henslow ( Floral Rambles in Highways and Byways) says with reference to the 'leaves' of the broom: 'It has generally no leaves, the green stems undertaking their duties instead. The leaves are alternate, hairy when young the lower ones shortly stalked, with three small, oblong leaflets, the upper ones, near the tips of the branches, sessile and small, often reduced to a single leaflet. Description-It grows to a height of 3 to 5 feet and produces numerous long, straight, slender bright green branches, tough and very flexible, smooth and prominently angled. Grene in winter and yelowe floures in somer thyche (the which) wrapped with hevy (heavy) smell and bitter sauer (savour). Presence thereof is witnesse that the ground is bareyne and drye that it groweth in. And is a shrub that growyth in a place that is forsaken, stony and untylthed.
#Scotch broom full#
'Genesta hath that name of bytterness for it is full of bytter to mannes taste. It had a place in the London Pharmacopceia of 1618 and is included in the British Pharmacopoeia of the present day. It is likewise the Genista figured by the German botanists and pharmacologists of the sixteenth century.īroom was used in ancient Anglo-Saxon medicine and by the Welsh physicians of the early Middle Ages. The medicinal use of the brush-like branches of the Broom, under the name Genista, Genesta, or Genestia, is mentioned in the earliest printed herbals, under Passau, 1485, the Hortus Sanitatis, 1491, the Grete Herball, 1516, and others. The generic name Cytisus is said to be a corruption of the name of a Greek island, Cythnus, where Broom abounded, though it is probable that the Broom known to the ancients, and mentioned by Pliny and by Virgil under the name of Genista, was another species, the Spanish Broom, Spartium junceum, as the Common Broom is in Greece and not found in Southern and Eastern Europe, being chiefly a native of Western, Northern and Central Europe. The local names of Basam, Bisom, Bizzom, Breeam, Browme, Brum and Green Broom have all been given it in reference to the habit of making brooms of it, and the name of the genus, Sarothamnus, to which it was formerly assigned, also points out this use of the plant, being formed from the Greek words signifying 'to sweep' and 'a shrub.' The specific name, Scoparius, also, is derived from the Latin scopa, a besom. Its long, slender, erect and tough branches grow in large, close fascicles, thus rendering it available for broom-making, hence its English name. Though now more generally known as Cytisus scoparius (Linn.), it has also been named Spartium scoparium (Linn.), Sarothamnus scoparius (Koch), and Genista scoparius (Lam.). It is remarkable as the only native medicinal plant used as an official drug that we draw from the important order of the Leguminosae, or pod-bearing tribe.
It is sparingly naturalized in sandy soil in North America. Habitat-The densely-growing Broom, a shrub indigenous to England and common in this country, grows wild all over temperate Europe and northern Asia, being found in abundance on sandy pastures and heaths. Substitutes -Synonyms-Spartium scoparium (Linn.).
Broom Botanical: Cytisus scoparius (LINN.)
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