A thorny evergreen shrub, with yellow flowers, Ulex gen. et spp., of which Ulex europaeus is particularly common upon the plains and hills of Great Britain and Ireland.
whin
noun
The plant woad-waxen (Genista tinctoria).
Gorse; furze (Ulex spp.).
Whinstone.
How often have the words furze and whin occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )