Gorse - Gorse in Popular Culture

Gorse in Popular Culture

In Thomas Hardy's classic novel The Return of the Native, when Clym is partially blinded through excessive reading, he becomes a furze-cutter on Egdon Heath, to the dismay of his wife, Eustacia. In the book, the timeless, gorse-covered heath is described in each season of the novel's year-and-a-day timeline and becomes symbolic of the greater nature of mankind.

Its flammability rendered gorse symbolic as quickly flammable and quickly burning out; for example, Doyle, in his book "Sir Nigel" has Sir John Chandos say: "...They flare up like a furzebush in the flames, but if for a short space you may abide the heat of it, then there is a chance that it may be cooler... If the Welsh be like the furze fire, then, pardieu! the Scotch are the peat, for they will smolder and you will never come to the end of them."

Winnie-the-Pooh fell into a gorse bush while trying to get honey in the first chapter of the book of the same name.

In J.R.R. Tolkien's second book Two Towers, Frodo and Samwise Gamgee led by Smeagol aka Gollum walked underneath very old and tall thickets of gorse on their way to pass by Minas Morgul or 'Tower of the Moon'.