Furze: Fodder, Folklore, and the Smell of Coconut

A sudden change in the weather, as if the sky has grown bored. No more sun-drenched optimism; just a grey sheet of disinterest overhead. Still, Roseberry manages to look charming, despite being surpassed by the only plant capable of making scrubland smell like a tropical cocktail — gorse. Its yellow blooms, reeking of coconut and vanilla, give nature’s equivalent of cheap perfume a run for its money.

“When gorse is in blossom, kissing’s in season,” the saying goes — a rare moment where folklore and botany try to flirt. The botanists, of course, spoil the fun. They are keen to explain that since England is littered with overlapping species — common gorse, western gorse, dwarf gorse — the flowers never quite go away. Ever in bloom, much like the British obsession with euphemism¹Mabey, Richard. “Flora Britannica”. Reed International Books Ltd. 1996. ISBN 1 85619 377 2..

But perhaps the phrase also hints at location. Lovers, after all, need somewhere inconvenient and mildly uncomfortable to wander off and pretend to be lost — and what better place than a spiky maze of gorse?

Fast-growing and hard to kill, gorse — also going by the aliases furze and whin, for those with time to waste — has been exploited for every tedious rural purpose imaginable. It burns hot enough for bakers’ ovens, it feeds animals that have no say in the matter, it serves as a clothes horse, becomes besom brooms, dyes Easter eggs, and was once cultivated like something desirable. Naturally, this led to petty regulations. In 1725, a Manor Court dictated not only that gorse should not be sold beyond the parish but also prescribed the exact dimensions of the blade with which it could be cut. Bureaucracy has always known where to find meaning.

In parts of western Britain, gorse is an essential hedging plan, often on top of earthbanks. One family in the New Forest managed to expand their land by quietly trimming one side of their hedge while letting the other sprawl, a strategy that says more about rural land management than any government white paper.

Old bushes were routinely burned to encourage regrowth — though officially this was about agriculture. Unofficially, it was about chasing out witches. Boats, too, are still occasionally scorched with flaming gorse, presumably to keep the bad luck out and the idiocy in.

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  Mabey, Richard. “Flora Britannica”. Reed International Books Ltd. 1996. ISBN 1 85619 377 2.