Genista

Genista, a genus of leguminous plants, comprising about 100 species of small branching shrubs from one foot to six feet in height and often spinous, which are natives of Western Asia, Europe, and North Africa. They bear simple or trifoliolate leaves with minute stipules or exstipulate, and their flowers are yellow and in racemes. The bilabiate calyx is five-toothed: the keel petals of the papilionaceous corolla are deflexed after flowering; and the ten stamens are all united below, and are alternately short with versatile, and long with basifixed anthers. There are three British species: the spinous Petty Whin or Needle Greenweed, 67. anglica; the rare 67. pilosa; and the Woadwaxen or Dyer's Greenweed, 67. tinetoria, the plante genet from which the royal family of Plantagenet derived their name and badge. The latter plant was formerly used to give a yellow dye, which, on the addition of the blue woad (q.v.), yielded Kendal green.