enotes a well-known household broom or implement wherewith to sweep away dirt, dust, and the like. We say, a birch-broom, a hair-broom, a rush-broom, a heath-broom. The primitive kind of brooms, from whence the denomination is given to all the rest, was made of the genista or wild broom growing on commons.

Broom-flower gives the denomination to an order of knights instituted by St Lewis of France, on occasion of his marriage. The motto was, Exaltat humilitas, and the collar of the order made up of broom-flowers and hulks, enamelled and intermixed with fleur-de-lys of gold, set in open lozenges, enamelled white, chained together, and as it hung a cross florence of gold. This answers to what the French call Ordre de la Geneste, from the name of a species of broom so called; different from the common broom, as being lower, the stalk smaller, and leaf narrow; the flower is yellow, and bears a long hulk. Some also speak of another order of the Geneste or Broom established by Charles Martel, or rather Charles VI.

Broom-gall, in natural history, a name given by authors to a remarkable species of galls found on the genista vulgaris or common broom. This is occasioned, like all other galls, by the puncture and eating of an insect; and, when opened, is found to contain a small oblong worm, of a red colour, but whose size requires the use of a glass in order to see it distinctly.

Broom-Rape, in botany. See Orobanche.