A spiny evergreen shrub of acid heath whose golden pea flowers smell unmistakably of coconut
Gorse — Ulex europaeus, also called furze and whin.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Gorse
Evergreen shrub · flowers chiefly January to June
Ulex europaeus — Fabaceae
Common gorse, also called furze and whin, is the spiny evergreen pea shrub whose coconut-scented golden flowers light up heath, moor, cliff and common. Because it is almost never entirely out of flower, it gave the proverb "when gorse is out of blossom, kissing's out of fashion". Exported as a hedge plant, it has become one of the world's worst invasive weeds in New Zealand, Hawaii and Chile.
How to spot them
- ▸A dense evergreen shrub to about 2.5 m, armed all over with stiff, deeply grooved green spines
- ▸Golden-yellow pea flowers, 15–20 mm, smelling strongly of coconut on a warm day
- ▸Calyx nearly as long as the flower, and the whole bush usually in bloom between January and June
- ▸Black, hairy pods that crack audibly open in hot weather and fling the seed
- ▸Acid, poor, sandy or peaty ground: heath, moor, common, clifftop and railway bank
How to know it
The proverb about kissing going out of fashion depends on this shrub scarcely ever being wholly out of bloom
Gorse — 'when gorse is out of blossom, kissing's out of fashion'.
Its black hairy pods crack audibly open on a hot day and fling the seed several metres
Gorse — explosive dehiscence.
Once cut and bruised as winter fodder, and burned in bakers' and lime-kiln ovens because it gives a fierce quick heat
Gorse — furze or whin.
A nitrogen-fixing legume in whose spines the Dartford warbler and stonechat nest
Gorse.
County flower of Belfast, and among the world's worst invasive species in New Zealand and Hawaii
Gorse — Ulex europaeus.
Two smaller British relatives of it flower in late summer instead, on the same heaths
Western gorse (Ulex gallii) and dwarf gorse (Ulex minor), which flower July to September.
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Fabaceae; three species grow wild in Britain — common gorse (Ulex europaeus), western gorse (Ulex gallii) and dwarf gorse (Ulex minor)
- •Common gorse flowers mainly January to June and can be found in bloom in almost any month; the two smaller species flower July to September
- •The Wildlife Trusts describe it as a large evergreen shrub with coconut-perfumed yellow flowers, on heath, moor, grassland and coast
- •The leaves of mature plants are reduced to spines; seedlings bear ordinary trifoliate leaves
- •A nitrogen-fixing legume, which is how it thrives on poor acid soils
- •Pods dehisce explosively in hot weather, and seed can remain viable in the soil for decades
- •County flower of Belfast in Plantlife's 2002 County Flowers survey
- •Listed among the world's worst invasive species; a serious pasture weed in New Zealand, Hawaii, Chile and Australia
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- The Wildlife Trusts — Common gorse