# Gorse (Ulex europaeus)

*Furze*

**Known today as.** *Ulex europaeus*. A spiny, coconut-scented, yellow-flowered shrub of heath and common land.

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

## What was it used for?

Young shoots as fodder in hard winters; the flowers used in folk dyeing and, now and then, in wine.

## What does modern science say?

No medicinal claims of note; valued chiefly as forage and as a nitrogen-fixing hedge.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **cytisine**: a quinolizidine alkaloid, in the seed
- **anagyrine**: 
- **ulexine**: the older name of cytisine

**Mechanism.** The seeds carry cytisine, the laburnum alkaloid, a partial agonist at nicotinic receptors, which vomits and then paralyses; the same molecule is now a licensed drug for stopping smoking. The flowers are harmless and the shoots were safe fodder.

**Dose.** The seeds in quantity are toxic to stock and children; cytisine the drug is given at 1.5 mg.

**Standing.** Cytisine, first isolated from gorse and laburnum, has been licensed as a smoking-cessation drug in Eastern Europe since 1964 and was shown non-inferior to varenicline in 2021.

## What lore surrounds it?

Because some gorse is nearly always in bloom somewhere on the bush, the English country saying held that “when gorse is out of bloom, kissing’s out of fashion”: that is, never.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Gorse enters the Natural History not as a medicine but as a tool of the Spanish gold-washings. The trenches dug for the water “at regular intervals, have a layer of ulex placed at the bottom. This ulex is a plant like rosemary in appearance, rough and prickly, and well-adapted for arresting any pieces of gold that may be carried along.” Afterwards “the ulex that is used for the above purpose is dried and burnt, after which the ashes of it are washed upon a bed of grassy turf, in order that the gold may be deposited thereupon.”

## Sources

- The Natural Navigator, “Gorse is out of bloom.”
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 33.21, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Walker, N., et al. (2014). “Cytisine versus nicotine for smoking cessation.” *New England Journal of Medicine* 371.
- Frohne, D., and Pfänder, H. J. (2005). *Poisonous Plants*, 2nd ed., “Fabaceae.”

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

Historical description, not medical advice.