Genista.] leguminos^. Ill 



In dry, hilly, bushy places, woods, thickets, heathy pastures, and on steep 

 banks, mostly on a gravelly or sandy soil ; very frequent. Fl. April — June. Fr. 

 July — September. Tj. 



In Sandown Bay a solitary bush with the flowers nearly pure while was observed 

 amongst many others with blossoms of the usual colour. 



A bushy shrub, from 3 or 4 to 10 or 12 feet high or even more, with copious, 

 alternate, erect, virgate, green, tough and flexible branches, which appear as if 

 deeply furrowed from the 6 short, salient, decurrent angles. Stem and primary 

 branches streaked or furrowed and often of a bright red, the former sometimes as 

 thick as the leg. Leaves from the same buds as the flowers, and appearing with 

 the latter or very shortly afterwards, ternate or partly simple, nearly erect ; leaf- 

 lets very small, scarcely half an inch long at most, obovale or obovato-elliptical, 

 acute, very nearly sessile, grayish green, and hoary with long silken appressed 

 hairs, most copious on their under side. Petioles very flat, variable in length, as 

 long as or often much longer than the leaves, sericeo-tomentose like the latter. 

 Flowers solitary or in pairs, erect in biid, lax or drooping when open, 9 or 10 lines 

 in length, bright golden-yellow, usually shaded with orange on the wings and 

 standard, rarely white, mostly tipped in the bud with brownish red. Pedicels 

 shorter than the flowers, subcompvessed, glabrous, with 2 or 3 minute scales about 

 their middle, lax or drooping, and springing from 3 or 4 small, roundish, obovate 

 or elliptical, simple leaflets, that surround the pedicel and precede the true leaves, 

 which almost immediately succeed the expanding blossoms, and are mostly ter- 

 nate on longer or shorter petioles, and chiefly produced on the young branches 

 and shoots. Calyx glabrous, bell-shaped, a little compressed, usually tinged with 

 reddish brown, about a quarter of an inch long, membranous, a little oblique at 

 the mouth, 2-lipped, the lips widely diverging, rounded, quickly becoming brown, 

 diy and marceseent ; upper lip with 2, lower with 3 minute teeth, each lip bearded 

 within at its apex with fine white hairs. Standard orbicular, emarginate, semicon- 

 duplieate (not spreading or reflexed), of an uniform yellow colour, excepting a 

 faint spot of orange streaked with fulvous-brown a little above the very short, 

 abrupt, narrow claw ; wings finally lax or drooping, oblong, with short linear 

 claws, as long as the keel ; keel very obtuse or rounded at its apex, paler yellow 

 than the rest of the flower, its 2 halves but shghtly cohering, often a little downy 

 along the suture, at length separated and pendulous, exposing the style and sta- 

 mens. Stamens all united at the base into a tube by cellular tissue, in 2 sets of 3 and 

 7, latter and inferior set much the longer ; filament glabrous ; anthers elliptical, 

 orange-coloured, minutely apiculate. Style extremely long, circinately revolute, 

 semiterete, with a furrow along its flat upper side, slightly enlarged upward just 

 beneath its hooked, glandular, acute apex or stigma. Germen narrowly elliptical, 

 densely silky, much compressed laterally. Legume from about an inch to an inch 

 and a half in length, blackish brown, roughish or subtuberculate, oblong, very 

 flat, fringed with fine white hairs along the sutures ; the lower one of which is 

 nearly straight, the upper more or less wavy, with a thickened margin, and termi- 

 nating in the short hard base of the style above the centre of the apex. Seeds 

 from 5 or 6, to 8, 10, or 12, pale olive-brown, roundish or subelliptical, a little 

 compressed, quite smooth, aljrupt, notched and foveate at the summit to receive 

 the carunculoid villose funiculus : hilum circular, depressed, downy, with a trans- 

 verse furrow. 



III. Genista, Linn. Green-weed. 



"Calyx 2-lipped; upper lip with two deep segments, entire, 

 lower one with 3 teeth. Standard oblong. Keel deflexed after 

 flowering. Legume flat or turgid, many-seeded. — Leaves simple 

 or trifoliate." — Br. Fl. 



1. G. tinctoria, L. Dyer's Green-weed. Woad-waxen. " Un- 

 armed, leaves lanceolate or elliptical nearly glabrous, stipules 



