Cytisus albus Hacq.

Horticultural & Botanical History

‘Native of the heaths and woods of the Banate, in Hungary.  Hardy.  Flowers in August.’  [BM t.1438/1812].  There has been nomenclature confusion concerning this plant and related species, particularly Cytisus albus Link., the Portugal White Broom, and the plant figured in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine may be the latter.

Introduced to Britain in 1806.  [PD].

History at Camden Park

Listed only in the 1857 catalogue [T.363/1857].

Notes

The International Plant Names Index (IPNI) relates Cytisus leucanthus Waldst. and Kit. to Chamaecytisus austriacus (L.) Link., synonym Cytisus austriacus L.  Chamaecytisus austriacus has bright yellow flowers, at odds with the specific epithet leucanthus, or white-flowered unless Cytisus albus Hacq. and its forms are considered pale coloured varieties of Cytisus austriacus as suggested by some authors.  As a further complication, Prain, in a discussion of Cytisus albus Link. remarks: ‘In his monograph of the genus, however, Briquet has indicated that the plant described by Haquet, for which in 1803 Waldstein and Kitaibel proposed the name C. leucanthus, under which it was figured at t.1438 of this work, is better treated as referable to C. supinus, Linn.’  [BM t.8693/1917].