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Genista ancistrocarpa Spach

G. anglica subsp. ancistrocarpa (Spach) Maire

Spa.: Aliaga, genista.   Fre.: Genêt.   Ara.: Guendul.

Shrub up to 2.5(3) m in height, spiny, hermaphrodite, highly branched, with erect stems and alternate branches, very foliose. Stems and old branches with brown bark, smooth, turning glabrous, hardly foliose. Young branchlets green, longitudinally striated-ribbed, with (5)6-7(8) inverted V-shaped ribs, sericeous, upper branchlets very foliose and unarmed, lower branchlets ending in a spine and without leaves, with numerous axillary spines simple or pinnate. Leaves alternate, without stipules, unifoliolate on fertile stems, and trifoliolate on sterile stems, subsessile, with leaflets 2.4-8 × 0.5-1 mm, narrowly lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, attenuated at the base, acute, green, glabrescent on both sides. Inflorescences racemiform, terminal, with (2)4-6(11) pedicellate flowers, with pedicel up to 4 mm, glabrous. Calyx 3-3.5 mm, glabrescent, deeply split into 2 lips, the upper lip bipartite into 2 triangular-ovate segments, and the lower lip tridentate, longer than the tube. Corolla 7-9.5 mm, papilionoid, yellow, caducous, with standard broadly elliptic-subrhomboid, subobtuse at the apex, glabrous, wings almost as long as the standard, and keel larger than the standard and wings. Androecium monadelphous, with 10 stamens. Ovary glabrous, and stigma elliptical and introrse. Pod 15-25 × 3.5-7 mm, cylindrical, swollen, with falcate apex, brown or blackish when mature, glabrous, with (3)10-30 seeds. Seeds 1.6-2.5 mm, ovoid or globose, smooth, brownish to almost black, without an aril.