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Genista triacanthos Brot.

Spa.: Aliaga morisca.   Fre.: Genêt.   Ara.: Guendul, chebrak.

Shrub or subshrub up to 1(1.5) m in height, spiny, hermaphrodite, highly branched, with erect or decumbent stems, only slightly foliose. Stems and old branches with brown bark, fissured longitudinally, turning glabrous. Young branchlets green, longitudinally striated-ribbed, with 4-5 inverted V-shaped ribs, somewhat hairy at first, ending in a spine. Spines simple, bifurcated, trifurcated or pinnate. Leaves alternate, with 3(5) leaflets —on the fertile branchlets sometimes unifoliolate or bifoliolate due to atrophy—, without stipules, subsessile, with leaflets 3.5-10 × 1-2 mm, linear-lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, briefly petiolulate, attenuated at the base, acute, green, puberulent or glabrescent on both sides, with spinescent phyllodes at the base. Inflorescences racemiform, terminal, ± dense, with 5-25 pedicellate flowers, with pedicel up to 2.5 mm, glabrous. Calyx 3-5 mm, glabrescent, deeply split into 2 lips, the upper lip bipartite into 2 triangular segments, and the lower lip trifid. Corolla 5-9.5 mm, papilionoid, yellow, caducous, with standard ovate, acute at the apex, glabrous, subequal to the wings and subequal or smaller than the keel. Androecium monadelphous, with 10 stamens. Ovary sericeous or tomentose, and stigma oblique and introrse. Pod 5.5-7.5 × 2.7-3.5 mm, ovoid-rhomboid, compressed, brown-reddish or blackish, sparsely sericeous, with 1(2) seeds. Seeds 1.4-1.8 mm, ovoid or somewhat compressed, smooth, brownish, without an aril.