figured by Tabernaemontanus in 1588, seems open to 
doubt ; L’Escluse, whose Spanish notes were published 
in 1576, does not allude to the species, and Tabernaemon- 
tanus has not recorded the native habit of his plant. 
Tournefort, who met with this broom in Portugal in 
1688, named it Cytisus lusitanicus foliis minimis argenteis 
parvo flore albo, and sent a specimen to Bobart, who iden- 
tified both it and some specimens of Retama monosperma, 
Boiss., with the Genista alba of Tabernaemontanus. The 
specimen given by Tournefort to Bobart is still in the 
Morison herbarium at Oxford, but that the plant had 
not been introduced to English gardens in 1699 when 
Bobart wrote, seems clear from the fact that there is no 
reference to it in the works of Ray. The earliest record 
of its cultivation in this country occurs in the third, or 
1739, edition of Miller’s Dictionary, where, as well as in the 
three subsequent issues of that work, it is given as the 
Portugal Base-Tree-Trefoil ; in the second edition of the 
Hortus Kewensis, the younger Aiton, in 1812, refers to 
the circumstance that it was grown by Miller as recently 
as in 1752. Shortly thereafter the plant would seem to 
have been lost to English gardens; it is not included in 
the seventh edition of 1759, or in any later issue of 
Miller’s work; moreover, the elder Aiton, in the first 
edition of the Hortus Kewensis, in 1789, treated it as 
-a new Spartium, S. multiflorum, which he termed the 
Portugal White Broom, introduced to. this country by 
Mr. James Gordon about 1770. Since this second intro- 
duction the plant has persisted in our collections ; indeed, 
in 1812, a third introduction took place, this time of a 
form which is, however, but an unstable colour-variant, 
in which the flowers are flushed with pink. According 
to Loddiges, this form with incarnate blossoms was 
raised from seeds by Thomson at Mill-end; Loddiges, 
however, adds that “it may be increased by seeds which 
are perfected in abundance, but the produce are not all 
pink-flowered.” Indeed, as our illustration shows, sprays 
with white flowers and others with the petals tinged with 
pink may at times be present on the same plant. That 
the Portugal White Broom is, as Tournefort had decided, 
a Cytisus, is not open to doubt, and Willkomm has stated 
that Quer, who accepted this view, actually named it 
