Cytisus striatus subsp. megalanthus (Pau & Font Quer) Rivas. Mart. & Belmonte
Sarothamnus megalanthus Pau & Font Quer, C. megalanthus (Pau & Font Quer) Font Quer
Eng.: Hairy-fruited broom. Spa.: Escoba morisca. Fre.: Cytise, genêt à balais.
Shrub up to 2 m in height, unarmed, hermaphrodite, deciduous, highly branched from the base, with erect stems. Stems and old branches ribbed-angular, green, glabrous. Young branchlets with 7-9 T-shaped ribs, with straight hairs along ribs and short uncinate or crisped hairs along the intercostal valleys, green. Leaves unifoliolate on the upper part of the plant —on young branchlets—, sessile, and on the rest of the plant trifoliolate, petiole 5-12 mm, without stipules, solitary or in small groups at the end of brachyblasts, with leaflets 12 × 3 mm, lanceolate or linear-lanceolate —wider at the brachyblasts—, glabrous on the upper side and sericeous on the underside, green on both sides. Flowers solitary on the branchlets of the current year, axillary, with pedicel 5-8 mm, slightly hairy, with 2 bracteoles below halfway. Calyx 5-7 mm fairly scarious, campanulate, green at first and then brownish, bilabiate, the upper lip with 2 small teeth at the tip and the lower lip with 3, also very small, lower lip as long as the upper lip. Corolla 20-35 mm, papilionoid, yellow, with an ovate-suborbicular standard, emarginate at the apex, glabrous, and with slightly larger wings and keel, the latter acute, falcate. Androecium monadelphous, with 10 stamens. Ovary densely villous, with the style widened towards the top, and capitate stigma. Pod 20-30 × 9-10 mm, trapezoid or rhomboid, swollen, green at first, then black, densely villous-cottony, with 6-10 seeds. Seeds 3-4 mm, ovoid, compressed, smooth, brownish.
Flowering:
May to June.
Fruiting:
June to August.
Habitat:
Cedar or oak (Quercus ilex) forests on siliceous mid-mountains (between 1,400 and 2,000 m above sea level), in subhumid to humid bioclimate, on mesomediterranean and supramediterranean floors.
Distribution:
Endemic to Morocco on the cooler and more humid central Rif siliceous mountains.
Observations:
C. striatus (Hill) Rothm. subsp. striatus, is not represented in North Africa (it is endemic to the western Iberian Peninsula). It differs from the Moroccan subspecies in that plants have somewhat smaller flowers, 16-27 mm, and also show great variation with regards to the shape and hairiness of the fruits, which can be glabrous or hairy.
Conservation status:
The species is relatively common, it is not considered threatened. In the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species it is listed as Least Concern (LC) at global level (Groom, 2012). The subsp. megalanthus, despite being highly localised, is also relatively common.