Genista florida L.
Spa.: Piorno, escobón, retama blanca. Fre.: Genêt.
Shrub up to 2.5(3) m in height, unarmed, hermaphrodite, highly branched, with erect stems, very foliose. Stems and old branches with brownish bark that peels into longitudinal strips, turning glabrous. Young branchlets striated longitudinally, with (8)10(12) T-shaped ribs, with sericeous hairs along the ribs and short uncinate hairs along the valleys. Leaves alternate, unifoliolate, with stipules —stipular organs with 3 ribs—, with leaflets 5-30 × 2-14 mm, oblanceolate, spatulate or ovate, attenuated at the base, petiolulate, acute or obtuse, green, sericeous on both sides although more on the underside. Inflorescences racemiform, terminal, with 3-30 pedicellate flowers, with pedicels up to 3.5 mm, sericeous. Calyx 5-10 mm, sericeous deeply split into 2 lips longer than the tube, the upper lip bipartite into 2 triangular-lanceolate segments, and the lower lip trifid or tridentate, larger than the upper lip. Corolla 10-15 mm papilionoid, yellow, marcescent, with standard ovate, rounded or emarginate at the apex, with dorsal side sericeous at the base and along the midrib —rarely glabrous—, subequal or somewhat longer than the wings and the keel. Androecium monadelphous, with 10 stamens. Ovary sericeous, and stigma globose, terminal. Pod 10-25 × 4.5-7 mm, linear-oblong, compressed, somewhat torulose, sericeous, with 2-6 seeds. Seeds 2.4-3 mm, ovoid or subglobose, smooth, brownish, without an aril.
Flowering:
May to July.
Fruiting:
July to September.
Habitat:
Forests and thickets of medium and high mountains, mainly on siliceous or decalcified soils, in areas of dry to subhumid bioclimate, on mesomediterranean and supramediterranean floors.
Distribution:
SW France, Iberian Peninsula and NW Africa (Morocco). In Morocco it grows only in the central Middle Atlas (rare) and the central-western High Atlas, where it is sometimes the dominant species of thickets above 2,000 m above sea level.
Conservation status:
A relatively common species, however not very frequent in North Africa. Currently, it has not been assessed at a global level in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.