# Broom (Spartium junceum)

**Ginestra**

**Known today as.** Spanish broom, *Spartium junceum*, or common broom, *Cytisus scoparius*.

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: Nicotinic poisoning (coniine, nicotine, cytisine) (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/nicotinic)

## What did Canale use it for?

“Much used for the bewitched”: flowers, seeds, and juice as vomits, the flowers even as a salad; its flowers in the oil for the bewitched (chs. 5, 9).

## What does modern science say?

Broom’s alkaloid sparteine acts on the heart, and in large doses causes vomiting and purging; Spanish broom has caused poisoning when substituted for true broom.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **sparteine**: 
- **scoparin**: 

**Mechanism.** Sparteine blocks sodium channels in the heart, a class I antiarrhythmic, and contracts the uterus, for which it was used in obstetrics. In 1979 Eichelbaum found that one person in twelve could not metabolise it: the discovery of the CYP2D6 polymorphism that governs the fate of a quarter of all drugs.

**Dose.** Sparteine in gram amounts is a poison to the heart and breath.

**Standing.** Withdrawn as a drug; the herb is in some European preparations for the circulation, at low dose.

## What lore surrounds it?

Broom, *genista*, gave the Plantagenet dynasty its name. Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, wore a sprig of the yellow-flowered plant as his badge in the twelfth century and was nicknamed “Plantegenest” for it; the name was adopted as a house name three centuries later by Richard, Duke of York, and applied by historians to the whole royal line that ruled England from 1154 to 1485.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Notes that in Asia “there is a thread made from broom, which is employed in the construction of fishing-nets, being found to be remarkably durable,” the shrub being steeped in water for ten days to prepare it.

**Culpeper.** Spares the description, the plant “being so generally used by all the good housewives almost through this land to sweep their houses with”; the juice or decoction of the young branches, or the powdered seed, purges downwards and draws watery humours from the joints, helping dropsy, gout, and sciatica, and provokes urine abundantly; the oil drawn from the green sticks heated in the fire helps the toothache.

## Sources

- “House of Plantagenet” (reference article).
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 19.2, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Culpeper, N. (1653). *The Complete Herbal*, “Broom, And Broom-Rape.” Project Gutenberg #49513.
- Eichelbaum, M., et al. (1979). “Defective N-oxidation of sparteine in man: a new pharmacogenetic defect.” *European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology* 16.

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*Broom.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/broom

Historical description, not medical advice.