#ulex

Plant of the Day

Tuesday 2 June 2026

The countryside of Scotland is yellow with Ulex europaeus (gorse, furze, thorn broom, whin) flowers which have a distinctive, coconut-perfume. This large, evergreen shrub is covered in needle-like leaves and thrives on a poor sandy soil in full sun. It can be tricky to establish.

Back with the twisty, dead gorse bushes and a couple of nice fungi: burgundy drop - Mycena haematopus and Polyporus tuberaster which is showing true goblet potential here.

An extremely tough spiky lugume native to Western Europe, now AKA furze or whin.

introduced to many other parts of the world where it's become an invasive fire-prone and fire-tolerant weed. A particular problem in New Zealand, where it was planted as hedges and promptly decided that the climate was very very much to its liking, thankyou. This was recognised as a problem by 1861, but people were still importing and planting the stuff well into the 1900s. Biocontrols are not proving very effective.

The flowers smell of coconut and the seed remains viable for decades.

Curiously enough, an extract of the plant is a remarkably effective binding lectin for H Substance, a surface antigen on red blood cells and the basis of the ABO blood type system - the extract is used to identify people with the rare Bombay Bloodtype, who don't express H Substance at all and will likely die if given a transfusion from somebody who does.

Gorse flowering in spring sunlight

Gorse