150 



THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



Which hath si gay and gorgeous covering on, 

 All golden with the never bloomless furze, 

 Which now blooms most profusely." 



The weather-wise rustics prognosti- 

 cate a rich harvest if there is a plenti- 

 ful bloom on the furze in spring, and 

 if there is a copious blossom in autumn 

 that it will prove a severe winter. The 

 furze is almost the only papilionaceous 

 plant that produces double flowers. 

 Such a variety may occasionally be 

 seen in cultivation in the gardens of 

 the curious. The gorse was the dis- 

 tinctive badge of the clan Sinclair or 

 Caithness, whose " country lay in the 

 extreme north of the mainland of 

 Scotland. In Scotland the gorse is 

 always called " whins/' which has been 

 traced to the Celtic " gen^' a small 

 shrub, and seems a relic of the time 

 when the genus Genista included the 

 whole of the shrubby section of the 

 Leguminosse, although it is now re- 

 stricted to three species, of which we 

 have no space to speak. ''Gorse'' is 

 from the Anglo-Saxon gorst, a waste ; 

 and "furze" is the A.S. fyrSy an 

 obscure name ; but probably from fir^ 

 as these plants were used for fuel, as 

 the pine-trees were ; or it may be from 

 forest, as these plants formed thickets 

 in waste lands. The generic name 

 ( JJlex) is from the Celtic " ^^^7^,'* all, 

 and also " ec " or " ac" a sharp point, 

 and would be very appropriate for the 

 dense prickly spines of the furze. The 

 specific name [Europceus), of course, 

 refers to its geographic distribution. 



The broom has been blessed— or other- 

 wise — with a multiplicity of names. 

 As we have seen, it was formerly in- 

 cluded amongst the Genistas, It was 

 the Spartion of Dioscorides. Pliny 

 also mentions this name in connection 

 with some kind of broom which was 

 used for making withes. He also 

 alludes, under the same name, to what 

 we now call Esparto, a Spanish and 

 North African grass, of which enormous 

 quantities are now imported for the 

 manufacture of paper. The broom was 

 called Spartium by Linneus, and it is 

 the Cytissus of various other authors, 

 so named from Cythros one of the 

 Cyclades where the broom flourished 

 abundantly. It is believed to be the 

 ''flowering Cytissus" of Virgil. At 

 present its common cognomon is the 

 ponderous one of {Sarothamnus scopari- 

 us), from the Greek " Saroo" I sweep, 

 " Thamnoi^ a shrub ; and the Latin 

 " Scopes^' thin twigs, or besoms, 

 Scoparius^' therefore is the plant 

 suitable for making besoms. In short 

 the whole name simply means "the 

 besom tree" — the broom bush. The 

 common name "broom," Scottish 

 " breem," although it is now exclusively 

 restricted to the besom-making plant, 

 is derived from the same Anglo-Saxon 

 root " hrom" hremhel" German 

 " brame^' a prickly or thorny foliaged 

 plant forming thickets or " brakes," as 

 brambles, briers, &c. This name of 

 brakes is applied to such plants as 



