Cytisus nigricans

Cytisus nigricans (also placed in the segregate genus Lembotropis as L. nigricans), the black broom, is an erect, deciduous shrub of the Fabaceae native to central and eastern Europe, typically growing 0.5-1.5 m tall with slender, ascending, ribbed green branches that are softly pubescent when young and turn dark grey-brown to almost blackish with age - a feature that gives the plant its common name. Leaves are alternate, trifoliolate and shortly stalked, with elliptic to obovate leaflets 1-3 cm long, soft-textured, dull green above and paler with appressed silky hairs beneath, often blackening on drying. The inflorescence is a long, slender, erect, terminal raceme 5-20 cm long bearing many bright yellow pea-flowers in spirals around the axis; each flower is 8-12 mm long with a standard, broad wings and a curved keel, on short pedicels subtended by tiny bracts. The calyx is bell-shaped, two-lipped, and sparsely hairy. Pods are flat, oblong-linear, 2-3 cm long and densely appressed-silky hairy, blackening on ripening and dehiscing along both sutures to release several flattened, hard, dark seeds. The species inhabits dry open woodland margins, sunny scrubby slopes and forest steppe.