Crossword clues for genista
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Genista \Ge*nis"ta\, prop. n. [L., broom.] (Bot.) A genus of plants including the common broom of Western Europe.
Wiktionary
n. (context botany English) Any member of the flowering plant genus ''Genista''.
Wikipedia
Genista is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family Fabaceae, native to open habitats such as moorland and pasture in Europe and western Asia. They include species commonly called broom, though the term may also refer to other genera, including Cytisus and Chamaecytisus. Brooms in other genera are sometimes considered synonymous with Genista: Echinospartum, Retama, Spartium, Stauracanthus, and Ulex.
They are mainly deciduous shrubs and trees, often with brush-like foliage, often spiny to deter grazing, and masses of small, pea-like yellow blooms which are sometimes fragrant. Many of the species have flowers that open explosively when alighted on by an insect, the style flying through the upper seam of the keel and striking the underside of the insect, followed by a shower of pollen that coats the insect.
The name of the Plantagenet royal line is derived from this genus, being a dialectal variation of planta genista.
Usage examples of "genista".
Their scent tinted the air, joining smells of dust, dew, the blue genista and red poppies that starred the long silky grass by the roadside verge, the scarlet cornflowers spangled through the undulating fields of wheat and clover.
The generic name Cytisus is said to be a corruption of the name of a Greek island, Cythnus, where Broom abounded, though it is probable that the Broom known to the ancients, and mentioned by Pliny and by Virgil under the name of Genista, was another species, the Spanish Broom, Spartium junceum, as the Common Broom is in Greece and not found in Southern and Eastern Europe, being chiefly a native of Western, Northern and Central Europe.