THE DWARF GORSE — continued. 
recumbent : its flowers are smaller and paler, with very minute, rounded, closely 
adpressed bracts, a calyx which is finely downy and has distinct spreading teeth, a 
narrower standard petal, and the wings shorter than the keel. Its pods do not ripen 
until nearly a year after their formation. This species, which has been very generally 
known by the name U lex nanus given it in 1798 by Thomas Furley Forster in 
Symons’s “ Synopsis Plantarum,” is a very striking feature, growing and flowering 
with the Fine-leaved Heath (Erica cinerea Linne) on sandy upland commons in the 
south-eastern counties. The first notice of it as a British plant appears to be by 
Thomas Johnson, who noticed it on his western tour near Southsea Castle. Calling 
it Genistella anglica spinosa, sive Chamcespartum supinum, or “ Creeping Dwarfe furze or 
Whins,” he describes its occurrence, in the Second Part of his “ Mercurius 
Botanicus ” (1641), as 
** Non procul a Castro South Sea Castle in Coinitatu South-hampton provsnit, ubi floret Julio et Augusto, gracilibus ramulis 
procumbent ibus.”* 
In 1846, Jules Planchon, afterwards Professor at Ghent and Montpellier, but 
then assistant in Sir William Hooker’s Herbarium, distinguished what he considered 
another species of Gorse ; and, in describing it in the “ Annales des Sciences ” for 
1849, named it, after the French botanist Le Gall, Ulex Gallii. This is the most 
frequent dwarf form in the west of England and the only one in Ireland ; but it is 
sometimes nearly as large as U. europceus. Its spines are stilfer than those of U. nanus 
and are often strongly deflexed. The branches are more erect, and the flowers, 
which open in the autumn, are of an orange colour, with minute adpressed bracts, as 
in U. nanus, but with the wing petals longer than the keel. The calyx is practically 
the same as that of U. nanus, from which it is difficult to separate the plant 
specifically ; but the pods burst in the spring. 
The so-called Irish Furze (Ulex strictus Mackay) is a fastigiate variety of 
U. europceus, with soft, slender four-angled spines, which grows a foot or two in 
height in Lord Londonderry’s park at Down ; but does not even come true 
from seed. 
The double-flowered variety of the Common Furze is an attractive plant on a 
lawn or in a garden hedge, and, as it is quite tolerant of the pruning shears, can be 
easily kept under control. 
*“It occurs not far from Southsea Castle in the County of Southampton, where it flawers in July and August, having 
slender procumbent branches.’ ' * 
