82 LEGUMINOS^E. 



alternately up the stalk, and relieved by the smooth, dark, 

 fine green foliage, render the plant both gay and elegant. 

 It flowers in July. 



The Needle Green-weed (G. anglica), I found at Brimhani 

 Bocks a wonderful collection of masses of millstone scattered 

 upon a wide swampy moor near Harrowgate. This plant is 

 almost as prickly as the Furze, it grows nearly prostrate, and 

 its flowers are paler and smaller. 



The Hairy Green-weed (G. pilosa), is destitute of prickles, 

 its blooms are of a fuller shade, and are not clustered as in the 

 Needle Green-weed. My specimen was sent to me from 

 Hampshire. Once I saw it grow abundantly, but it was on 

 sandstone rocks about Heidelberg, and those specimens are 

 not admissible in our British collection. 



The Dyer's Green-weed is sometimes used for imparting a 

 yellow colour to wool. 



The BROOM (Cytisus scoparia, fig. 3), is our well-known 

 representative of the next family. More widely distributed 

 than the Furze, but not growing in such immense masses, it 

 is at once a handsome and a graceful shrub. Burns testifies 

 his preference for it. 



" Their groves of sweet Myrtle let foreign lands reckon, 

 Where bright beaming summers exalt the perfume ; 

 Far dearer to me yon lone glen o' green brecken, 

 Wi' the burn stealing under the lang yellow Broom." 



This plant used to be included in the last family. The name, 

 Genista, was taken from the French " Plant a genet," or 

 " genet a balai," for from it they make brooms. Fulke, Earl 

 of Anjou, being ordered to make a pilgrimage as a penance 

 for his sins, and, at the same time to submit to castigation, 

 wore afterwards a sprig of the rod in his helmet as a token 

 of his humility, and hence received the name Plant a genet. 

 Geoffry, another Earl of Anjou, the husband of the Empress 

 Matilda of Germany, went into battle with the same emblem 

 on his helmet, and thus the name came to be bequeathed 

 to his descendants the Plantagenets. In 1234, Louis of 



