German greenweed

Genista germanica is a small, deciduous, spiny shrub of the Fabaceae family, typically growing 30 to 60 centimetres tall, with stiff, erect, branched stems bearing slender, simple or branched spines 5 to 15 millimetres long along their length, giving the plant a bristly appearance. The leaves are simple, alternate, narrowly lanceolate to elliptic, 1 to 2 centimetres long, pointed at the apex and sparsely silky-hairy, particularly on the underside and margins; stipules are inconspicuous. In late spring and early summer the shrub produces dense, short, terminal racemes of bright yellow pea flowers, each 8 to 12 millimetres long, with a hairy calyx and a standard petal often slightly hairy along the keel. The flowers are followed by small, hairy, oblong legume pods 8 to 15 millimetres long containing two to four shiny dark seeds. Native to central and eastern Europe, extending from France and Germany to the Balkans and western Russia, the species inhabits dry open woods, heaths, scrub and rough grassland on sandy or sandy-loam soils.