Spartium junceum L.
Eng.: Spanish broom. Spa.: Gayomba, retama de olor. Fre.: Genêt d’Espagne, spartier à tiges de jonc. Ara.: Habbur, kessaba, khabur, tertak, bu tertak. Tam.: Attertag, tegtag.
Shrub up to 3(4) m in height, unarmed, hermaphrodite, deciduous, broom-like in appearance, with stems and branches highly branched from the base. Stems and old branches with greyish bark, somewhat fissured. Young branchlets arundinaceous, with numerous ribs barely prominent, greenish, sericeous at first and then glabrous. Leaves unifoliolate, alternate or ± opposite, with petioles and stipules, promptly deciduous, sericeous-silvery when young and glabrous or almost glabrous later, with leaf-blade 1.5-3 × 0.3-0.8 mm, linear or lanceolate, entire, acute, attenuated at the base, on a very short petiole. Inflorescence racemose, very lax, terminal, with 1-10 pedicellate flowers, with pedicel 2-4 mm, glabrous, each flower with 2 promptly caducous bracteoles. Calyx 8-10 mm, briefly bilabiate —unilabiate in appearance—, greenish, glabrous, persistent when fruiting, with the upper lip very reduced and the lower lip like a spathe with 5 small distal teeth. Corolla 20-30 mm, papilionoid, yellow, marcescent, with an ovate standard, almost entirely glabrous, wings shorter and keel longer or the same length as the standard, cuspidate-recurved upwards. Androecium monadelphous, with 10 stamens. Ovary villous, and stigma linear-elliptic, introrse. Pod 4-12 × 0.5-0.8 cm, erect, linear, compressed, green and sericeous at first, then glabrous and dark brown, with 10-18 seeds. Seeds 3-4.5 mm, ovoid, compressed, smooth, brown.
Flowering:
April to June.
Fruiting:
July to September.
Habitat:
Clearings in forests and thickets, on very diverse soils, in semiarid to subhumid bioclimate, on thermomediterranean and mesomediterranean floors.
Distribution:
Mediterranean region and western Asia, extending through naturalisation towards the W and central Europe, and Macaronesia (Azores, Madeira and Canary Islands). In North Africa is a very rare and very scattered shrub, growing in Morocco (Tingitana Peninsula and, in the SW, in Akermu, Chiadma), northern Algeria (Tellian Atlas and neighboring areas), Tunisia (Krumiria, Cap Bon and the Tunisian Dorsal) and NE Libya (Jebel Akhdar Massif, Cyrenaica).
Observations:
Often a species cultivated as an ornamental, from where it can easily become naturalised.
Conservation status:
A relatively common and widely distributed species, not considered threatened. Currently, it has not been assessed at a global level in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.