PETTY WHIN: BUTCHER'S BROOM 297 



Leaves minute, 5 8 mm. long, narrow- 

 lanceolate or obovate : shoots erect. 



Genista anglica, L. Petty Whin. Small spinescent 

 bush, with simple slender recurved spines, in the axils of 

 minute sub-sessile leaves. Leaves small, 4 8 x 1 3 mm., 

 often crowded in tufts, dark green, glabrous; on the 

 flowering shoots slightly ovate, oblong-ovate or obovate, 

 acute or obtuse ; those on the sterile shoots narrow- 

 lanceolate, acute. Spines simple, slender, spreading or 

 recurved, 2 3 cm. Stipules obsolete. Venation ob- 

 scurely pinnate. Autumn leaves yellow. 



[Although belonging to a group, Leguminosse, typically 

 stipulate and with compound leaves, Genista anglica has 

 no stipules and the leaves are reduced. 



The spinescent shoots of Ulex occasionally bear a few 

 minute unifoliolate leaves.] 



7 O Leaf -like shoots (cladodes} ovate-lanceo- 

 late^ stiff, spine-pointed, and evergreen. 



Ruscus aculeatus. Butcher's Broom. Small evergreen 

 bush, with crowded, hard, stiff, prickle-pointed, leaf-like 

 branches (cladodes), on the flat surfaces of which the 

 flowers are borne in the axils of minute scarious scales. 

 Long shoots cylindric, hard, dark greyish green, grooved 

 and ridged, the ridges puberulent; springing from the 

 axils of flattened brown scales, with thin linear insertions 

 extending about J of the way round the shoot. Cladodes 

 2 5 cm. (2 3 cm. x 8 12 mm.), ovate-lanceolate to ellip- 

 tic-ovate, acuminate, pungent, hard, rigid, entire, twisted 

 on the narrow sub-sessile bases ; dark green, glabrous and 

 shining on both surfaces, each subtended by a minute 

 subulate scarious scale (the true leaf). 



Venation of three principal veins, slightly prominent 



