Genista osmarensis Coss.
Cytisus osmarensis (Coss.) Ball, Teline osmarensis (Coss.) P.E. Gibbs & Dingwall
Shrub up to 4 m in height, unarmed, hermaphrodite, highly branched, with erect stems, highly foliose. Stems and old branches with brown-greyish bark, fissured longitudinally and transversely, turning glabrous. Young branchlets striated-ribbed longitudinally, green, sericeous. Leaves alternate, trifoliolate, with persistent stipules, petiolate —petiole 7-10 mm, sericeous—, with leaflets up to 35 × 18 mm, oblong-ovate or obovate, flat, briefly petiolulate, mucronate, green, loosely hairy on the upper side, and sericeous-canescent on the underside. Inflorescences in corymbiform groups, terminal, with 6-9 pedicellate flowers, with pedicel up to 4 mm, sericeous. Calyx 13-14 mm, densely sericeous, deeply split into 2 lips, the upper lip divided up to the base into 2 lanceolate-acuminate segments, and the lower lip tridentate. Corolla 15-18 mm, papilionoid, yellow, with a suborbicular standard, emarginate, hairy on the dorsal side, longer than the wings and the keel. Androecium monadelphous, with 10 stamens. Ovary sericeous-villous, and capitate stigma. Pod 18-22 × 5-6 mm, linear-oblong, compressed, slightly torulose, silky-villous, with 2-3 seeds. Seeds 2.5-3 mm, ovoid, compressed, smooth, brown, with an aril.
Flowering:
May to June.
Fruiting:
June to July.
Habitat:
Forests and thickets of low and medium mountains on calcareous soils.
Distribution:
Endemic to the mountains of the NW Rif, Morocco (Tetuan, Beni Hosmar).
Conservation status:
A species with a small distribution range and with few specimens, its conservation status should be studied further. Currently, it has not been assessed at a global level in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.