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Calicotome villosa (Poir.) Link

Spartium villosum Poir., S. lanigerum Desf.

Eng.: Thorny broom.   Spa.: Jerguén, erguén, cambrón, cambrona.   Fre.: Calicotome velu.   Ara.: Gendul, dar chichaan.   Tam.: Uzzu, azezu, agendal.

Shrub up to 3 m in height, spiny, hermaphrodite, deciduous, highly branched, with spreading branches. Stems and old branches with greyish bark, slightly or not at all fissured, with hairs persistent for a long time. Young branchlets with 12-18 longitudinal T-shaped ribs, densely sericeous —and with abundant hairs more than 0.5 mm—, greyish, sharp, —as well as the old branches— like large spines. Leaves alternate, trifoliolate, without stipules, petiolate, with petiole 4-13 mm, and leaflets 4-15 × 2-6 mm, obovate, obtuse, sometimes mucronate or slightly emarginate at the apex, attenuated at the base and shortly petiolulate, entire, with ± dark green upper side, glabrous or glabrescent, and a sericeous underside. Inflorescence racemose, terminal, with the axis ending in a spine, or in glomeruli of 3-5 flowers surrounded by leaves, with pedicellate flowers, the pedicel with 3 bracteoles fused into a structure —entire to trifid—. Calyx 2.5-3.4 mm, subcylindrical, greenish-yellow, sericeous, bilabiate, with 2 teeth on the upper lip and 3 in the lower lip, very small, transversely circumcise in anthesis. Corolla (12)13-15 mm, papilionoid, yellow, with an obovate-suborbicular standard, often emarginate, glabrous, with wings as long as the standard or somewhat longer, and the keel slightly shorter than the wings, with ciliated auricle. Androecium monadelphous, with 10 stamens. Ovary densely villous, and capitate stigma. Pod 20-41 × 3-6(7) mm, oblong or oblong-linear, ± straight, compressed, with 2 wings 1.5-2 mm wide across the ventral suture, densely villous-lanate, green at first and then blackish when ripe, with 1-7 seeds. Seeds 3.1-3.7 mm, ovoid, compressed, smooth, brownish.