Adenocarpus decorticans

Adenocarpus decorticans, the silvery broom or rascaviejas, is a medium-sized shrub in the family Fabaceae native to the Iberian Peninsula and the mountains of northwestern Africa, where it forms part of dry, sunny scrub on schistose and granitic soils in the supra-Mediterranean belt. Plants typically grow 1–3 m tall with stout, erect, branched stems whose smooth, grey-brown bark conspicuously peels away in thin papery sheets and longitudinal strips — the feature that gives rise to its specific epithet 'decorticans'. The leaves are alternate, often clustered on short spur shoots, and trifoliolate; the small, narrowly elliptic to oblanceolate leaflets are 6–12 mm long, densely covered with appressed silvery hairs that give the foliage a soft grey-green sheen. In late spring and early summer the shrub bears showy, dense, terminal racemes of bright yellow pea-shaped flowers about 12–15 mm long. The fruit is a small, flattened legume covered with characteristic gland-tipped warts, a diagnostic feature of the genus Adenocarpus.