Boissier's hedgehog broom
Echinospartum boissieri
Family · Fabaceae · Irritating
The spiny cushion of Andalusian limestone ranges, so dense and so stiff that it forms almost spherical balls on stony ground, topped with yellow flowers. Everyone who has seen one has tried sitting on it once.
Uplands · Scrubland
Also known ashedgehog broom
How to tell it
A shrub in a compact hemispherical cushion, up to a metre wide and half a metre tall, built of stiff spine-tipped branches. Leaves of three small silky leaflets, dropped early. Yellow pea flowers in clusters at the tips, with a very hairy calyx. Range: mainly a Spanish plant, practically absent from Portugal.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None. It is endemic to the Baetic ranges, dominant in Cazorla, Segura and Sierra Mágina, where it forms what is called erizal. The cushions grow a few millimetres a year and one careless step wrecks decades.