Seeing yellow these days? As in…those brightly-blooming yellow-flowering shrubs along roads and hillsides from the Bay Area to the Sierra Nevada foothills. Broom—French, Spanish, and Scotch—is in full spring bloom, even at higher elevations.

Spanish broom, Spartium junceum (also known as Genista juncea), is a heat-loving, deciduous, flowering shrub with yellow, pea-like flowers in the family Fabaceae. Originally used as a landscape shrub, it has escaped into wild lands and occupies disturbed sites along roadsides in warm, sandy soil. It can establish dense stands and out-compete native vegetation.

Like Spanish broom, French broom, Genista...