170 LEGUMINOS^. 



LEGUMINOSiE. 



HERBA SCOPARII. 



Cacumina vel Swrnraitates ScoiKirii ; Broom Tops ; F. Genit a halais; 

 G. Besenginster, Pfriemenhraut. 



Botanical Origin — Cytisus Scoparius Link (Spartium Scoparium 

 L., Sarothamnus vulgaris Wimmer), the Common Broom, a woody 

 shrub, 8 to 6 feet high, grows gregariously in sandy thickets and un- 

 cultivated places throughout Great Britain, and Western and temperate 

 Northern Europe. In continental Europe it is plentiful in the valley of 

 the Rhine up to the Swiss frontier, in Southern Germany and in Silesia, 

 but does not ascend the Alps, and is absent from many parts of Central 

 and Eastern Europe, Polonia for instance. According to Ledebour, it is 

 found in Central and Southern Bussia and on the eastern side of the 

 Ural Mountains. In Southern Europe its place is supplied by other 

 species. 



History — From the fact that this plant is chiefly a native of 

 Western, Northern and Central Europe, it is improbable that the 

 classical authors were acquainted with it ; and for the same reason the 

 remarks of the early Italian writers may not always apply to the 

 species under notice. With this reservation, we may state that broom 

 under the name Genista, Genesta, or Genestra is mentioned in the 

 earliest printed herbals, as that of Passau,^ 1485, the Ilortus Sanitatis, 

 1491, the Great Herbal printed at South wark in 1526, and others. 

 It is likewise the Genista as figured and described by the German 

 botanists and pharmacologists of the 16th century, like Brunfels, Fuchs, 

 Tragus, Valerius Cordus (" Genista angulosa") and others. Broom was 

 used in ancient Anglo-Saxon medicine^ as well as in the Welsh 

 "Meddygon Myddvai." It had a place in the London Pharmacopoeia of 

 1618, and has been included in nearly every subsequent edition. 

 Hieronymus Brunschwyg gives* directions for distilling a water from 

 the flowers, " flores genestce" — a medicine which Gerarde relates was 

 used by King Henry YIII. " against surfets and diseases thereof 

 arising." 



Broom was the emblem of those of the Norman sovereigns of 

 England descended from Geofliy the "Handsome," or " Plantagenet," 

 count of Anjou (obiit A.D. 1150), who was in the habit of wearing the 

 common broom of his country, the "planta genista," in his helmet. 



Description — The Common Broom has numerous straight ascending 

 wiry branches, sharply 5-angled and devoid of spines. The leaves, of 

 which the largest are barely an inch long, consist of 3 obovate leaflets 

 on a petiole of their own length. Towards the extremities of the twigs, 

 the leaves are much scattered and generally reduced to a single ovate 

 leaflet, nearly sessile. The leaves when young are clothed on both sides 

 with long reddish hairs ; these under the microscope are seen each to 



' Herbarius, Patavie 1485. ^ De arte disiillandi, first edition 1500, 



* Cockayne Leeclidoms, &c., iii. (1866) Argentorati, cap. xv. 

 316. 



