Genista versicolor

Genista versicolor is a low-growing, cushion-forming dwarf shrub in the family Fabaceae endemic to the high mountains of southern Spain, principally the Sierra Nevada and adjoining ranges of Andalusia, where it forms a characteristic component of the spiny xerophytic cushion-scrub vegetation between roughly 1,800 and 3,000 metres elevation. It typically reaches 10 to 40 centimetres in height with a much greater spread, the densely intricately branched stems being green, ridged and somewhat spiny at the tips. The small simple to occasionally trifoliolate leaves are sessile or nearly so, narrowly oblanceolate, 3 to 8 millimetres long, sparsely silky-pubescent and quickly deciduous, so that mature plants appear almost leafless. Bright golden-yellow papilionate flowers about 8 to 12 millimetres long are borne singly or in pairs at the tips of short lateral shoots in late spring and early summer, the standard often becoming reddish or orange-tinged with age. The fruit is a small ovoid silky-hairy legume containing one to a few seeds.