Genista quadriflora Munby
G. moleroi Talavera & P.E.Gibbs
Spa.: Aliaga, genista. Fre.: Genêt. Ara.: Chedida, azmerwik.
Shrub or subshrub up to 1.5(1.75) m in height —but often cushion-shaped and even up to 0.5 m—, usually unarmed, hermaphrodite, with straight and highly branched stems, with opposite rigid branches —sometimes sharp—, and leaves very promptly deciduous, giving an ephedroid aspect. Stems and old branches with brown bark, striated-ribbed, glabrescent. Young branchlets also striated-ribbed longitudinally, green, hairy. Leaves alternate or opposite, unifoliolate but mostly absent and reduced to a swollen stipular body. Inflorescence capituliform, terminal, 2-4(5) pedicellate flowers, with pedicel up to 2 mm, sericeous. Calyx 4-6 mm, sericeous, deeply split into 2 lips, the upper lip bipartite into 2 triangular-ovate lobes, and the lower lip slightly longer or the same length, deeply tridentate, with triangular-lanceolate teeth. Corolla 8-11 mm, papilionoid, yellow, with an ovate standard, with retuse apex, sericeous on the dorsal side, wings shorter, glabrous, and keel sericeous, larger than the standard. Androecium monadelphous, with 10 stamens. Ovary sericeous, and capitate stigma. Pod 10-15 × c. 4 mm, linear-oblong, compressed, somewhat torulose, brown, densely sericeous, with 1-5 seeds. Seeds c. 2 mm, lenticular, smooth, brown or brownish, without an aril.
Flowering:
April to June.
Fruiting:
June to August.
Habitat:
Clearings in forests and thickets on siliceous soils, from sea level up to 2,400 m altitude, in areas with semiarid to humid bioclimate, on mainly thermomediterranean and mesomediterranean floors.
Distribution:
Endemic to Morocco (from the Rif up to the High Atlas —N of Amizmiz— and to NW Algeria (scattered along littoral areas and inland mountains of western Tellian Atlas).
Conservation status:
A species with a small distribution range but in principle it is not considered threatened. Currently, it has not been assessed at a global level in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.