Shrubs, often stiff or spiny, with 3-foliolate or 1-foliolate leaves, and showy clustered flowers, mainly in terminal racemes. Calyx 2-lipped, campanulate, the teeth short; standard ovate or orbicular; wings oblong or obovate; keel straight or curved. Stamens monadelphous; anthers alternately larger and smaller. Ovary sessile, many-ovuled; style incurved. Pod flat, oblong or linear, pubescent or glabrous, several-seeded; seeds strophiolate. [From Cythrus, one of the Cyclades, where the first species was found.]

About 45 species, natives of Europe, western Asia and northern Africa, the flowers very slightly different from those of Genista. Type species: Cytisus hirsittus L.

1. Cytisus Scopàrius (L.) Link. Broom. Green Or Scotch Broom. Hagweed

Fig. 2467

Spartium scoparium L. Sp. Pl. 709. 1753.

Cytisus scoparius Link, Enum. Hort. Berol. 2: 241. 1822.

Sarothamnus scoparius Wimm.; Koch, Syn. Fl. Germ. 152. 1837.

Stiff, wiry, 3°-5° high, much branched, nearly glabrous. Branches elongated, straight, nearly erect, angled; lower leaves petioled, 3-foliolate, the leaflets obovate, acute, or mucronate-tipped, 3"-5" long, entire, narrowed at the base; upper leaves sessile, often 1-foliolate; stipules none; flowers bright yellow, nearly 1' long, in elongated terminal leafy racemes; pedicels solitary or 2-3 together, 3"-s" long; pod flat, glabrous on the sides, but ciliate on the margins, 1'-2' long; style slender, at length spirally curved.

In waste places, Nova Scotia to Massachusetts, Delaware and Virginia. Also in California and on Vancouver Island. Ad-ventive or naturalized from Europe. Bannal. Besom. Summer.