A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
gorse
Gorse is a dense, viciously spined evergreen shrub of heath, cliff top, and rough grazing, carrying yellow pea flowers that smell distinctly of coconut on a warm day. It fixes its own nitrogen, so it thrives on poor ground, and it is almost never entirely out of flower, which is the basis of the old saying that when gorse is out of bloom, kissing is out of season.
Etymology
The word is Old English and is thought to be related to an old root for something bristling. English has three names for the same plant, split regionally: gorse in the south and generally, furze in the southwest and in older writing, and whin in the north and in Scotland. The three have coexisted for a thousand years.
Notes
The seed pods dry, twist, and split with an audible crack on a hot afternoon, throwing seed several yards, and a gorse bank in July ticks and pops continuously. Gorse was a crop as well as a nuisance: It was cut and crushed as winter fodder, burned in bread ovens because it gives a fast fierce heat, and grown deliberately as stock-proof hedge.