Evergreen shrub to 2-5 m tall with ridged branchlets. Leaves with 3 leaflets, each up to 2 cm long, obovate, silky below. Flowers on sideshoots mostly 5 cm or more long. Flowers 1-2 cm long. Corolla about 1 cm long, yellow. Fruit not seen.
This putative horticultural hybrid (probably G. canariensis × G. stenopetala) has several closely related species and has, at one time or another, been treated as each of them. It differs from G. monspessulana in having elongated flower clusters, and from G. stenopetala in having standards with at least a small area of pubescence.Very similar to G. canariensis but generally larger in most characters.The similar G. maderensis Lowe has a hairless standard. The distinctions between these species are unclear and some botanists consider G. × spachiana to be part of a polymorphic G. canariensis. Syn. Teline canariensis. Several of these species are reported to hybridise both in nature and in cultivation and this could well account for their apparent intergrading; more revisionary work is needed here. If G. × spachiana produced fertile seed then some variation could be expected in its seedling progeny. Syn. G. × racemosus hort., G. racemosus hort., Genista fragrans and Cytisus fragrans of horticulture].
Sometimes available as the cultivars 'Yellow Imp' and 'Nana'.
Garden origin.
Source: (2002). Fabaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 3. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 2. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.