In a local context, names like Broomhouse and Broompark are derived from the common Broom plant once found in these areas, which still flourishes all over Scotland and in the upper fields of Blantyre.
Two types of Broom grow around this area, namely thorny and plain broom. Calicotome spinosa known as thorny broom or spiny broom is a very spiny, densely branched shrub of the legume family Fabaceae, which can reach up to three metres in height.
The yellow flowers were used to produce perfumes and the shrub itself when stripped used to assist thatch and the bristles of hardwearing brooms, likely where the name came from.
It tends to grow in disturbed ground, typically hedgerows, field boundaries, roadsides, old quarries and the like, not usually out in open fields. It prefers sun and dry, rocky ground and is very fast growing. It can be seen in most abundance at the Lady Nancy, Auchentibber, Park, Priory and Redlees.
From “Blantyre Explained” by Paul Veverka (c) 2017
On Blantyre Project social media, with granted permission. Strictly not for use on any other website or publication:
😂😂Sunny was a joker 😂😂😂
Calicotome spinosa referred to in the article can’t survive here and has not been recorded as wild in any known tetrads of Britain and is not included in the British Flora for that reason. It can only be grown really in an arid hothouse which might allow some localities. 
🙂
So its Broom and Gorse here, with only a few other rarer species liking specific habitats, including coastal dunes, but we don’t have the Mediterranean species of Broom referred to.
I should say that the Broom prefix Paul is a bit chicken and egg, as it can be hard to determine whether…See more
