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