Common Name: 
Gorse
Furze

About 20 species of very spiny, dense shrubs.  Leaves densely crowded, usually alternate, reduced to a thorny leaf petiole or a small scale.  Flowers yellow, in apical thorn axil.  Fruit a pod, ovate to linear-oblong.  Native to western Europe and northern Africa, naturalized in the Americas.
Ulex: the name Pliny used for heather.

Pronunciation: 
EW-leks
Family: 
Fabaceae
Leguminosae