Bot. [L., a. Gr. κύτισος a shrubby leguminous plant.] a. A shrubby plant mentioned by the Greek and Roman writers, as useful for fodder; now identified with the Shrubby Medic, Medicago arborea. b. Bot. Adopted by Linnæus as the name of a genus of leguminous shrubs and trees, including the common Broom (though this has by many been made the type of a separate genus), the Laburnum, and other species, one of which (C. racemosus), a well-known early flowering greenhouse and window plant with a profusion of yellow flowers, is the Cytisus of florists.
By early writers the name was often applied to other shrubby leguminous plants.
1548. Turner, Names of Herbes. Cytisus groweth plentuously in mount Appennine,… I haue not sene it in Englande. Cytisus may be called in englishe tretrifoly.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, VI. lxi. Cytisus is a shrubbe or bush with leaues, not muche vnlyke Fenugreke, or Sene; the flowers be faire and yellow, almost like to Broome flowers.
1710. Congreve, Ovid’s Art Love, III. Wks. III. 1047 (T.).
| There, Tamarisks with thick-leav’d Box are found, | |
| And Cytissus, and Garden Pines, abound. |
1794. Martyn, Rousseau’s Bot., xxv. 362. Evergreen Cytisus has the flowers coming out singly from the side of the stalk.
1855. Singleton, Virgil, I. 8. No [more] my goats … the blooming cytisus … shall you browse.
1892. Star, 14 May, 1/7. Marguerites … wave gaily above rows of drooping cytisus and hanging grass.
