Calicotome Link
Spiny shrubs. Lvs 3-foliolate, petiolate; leaflets entire; lateral veins indistinct; stipules inconspicuous. Fls axillary and solitary, or in fascicles or ebracteate racemes; bracteoles usually 3-fid. Calyx tubular, with 5 short teeth; upper portion soon breaking away leaving a cup-like remnant. Corolla yellow. Stamens connate into a closed tube; alternate anthers long and basifixed or short and versatile. Style incurved, glabrous; stigma capitate or oblique. Pod flattened, ± straight or slightly curved, dehiscent, with upper suture somewhat thickened and usually winged, several-seeded; seeds estrophiolate.
2 spp., Mediterranean. Naturalised sp. 1.
Gibbs, P. E., Notes Roy. Bot. Gard. Edinb. 28: 275-286 (1968), suggested that "... there are some grounds for treating Calicotome as a single circum-Mediterranean species", but treated Calicotome as 2 spp. Most naturalised N.Z. material fits descriptions of C. spinosa, but some material is unusual in having many-flowered fascicles and thus approaches C. villosa (Poiret) Link var. rigida (Viv.) Bég. et Vaccari (P. E. Gibbs, pers. comm.). However, it is unlikely that more than one taxon is naturalised in N.Z.; these forms probably only represent variation within C. spinosa.
