Of Brooms and Broom

 Everyone knows a broom:

broom

And lots of people know the plant, broom, common broom, Scotch broom Cytisus scoparius  

Scotch broom, common broom, Cytisus scoparius

I was surprised to learn that the plant named the tool, not vice versa.

The Oxford English dictionary traces the word broom, used for the tool to sweep floors, back to 1481. They have records of people speaking of the broom plant, common broom, also called Scotch broom, in Old English, before 1066. Using the broom plant to sweep led to calling the sweeping tool a broom. 

Before they were called brooms, English speakers swept with besoms. Besom is now obsolete as a word for broom, but is sometimes used as an unflattering word for a woman.

I am always curious about the history of everyday items. I could not find a satisfactory history of sweeping, it is perhaps too common and too simple to leave much of a record, but surely people all over the world, from the time they lived in caves, swept the floors clean. Some plants have dense tops and will push out dirt efficiently, others will not, so of course there were preferred plants for sweeping.

Across the world, brooms took on all kinds of shapes. 

brooms, Canada
(Granville Island Broom Company, Vancouver)

a broom seen in China

broom, seen in Taiwan

I googled the history of brooms and learned that U.S. gives credit to Levi Dickenson for inventing the broom. In 1797 he made a broom for his wife using sorghum stems and promoted it into a successful business. The Dickenson broom is the ancestor of modern U.S. brooms but was clearly not the first broom. Sorghum stems were a good choice and continue today (see the first photo, my current broom and the Canada brooms). Dickenson's was more bulky than modern brooms, round, and its short handle was awkward. By 1810 a wooden pole had been added to ease sweeping. Likewise the methods of attaching the handle to the sorghum stems--rope, wire, stitching--have evolved. The characteristic flattened shape is attributed to Shaker community in Watervliet, New York, who made and sold many brooms in the early 1800s.

The broom which was originally made of broom is now made of sorghum or, of course, plastic.

Broom is the common name of Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius) a plant in the pea family (Fabaceae) native across Europe and into North Africa, and today found as a weed all over the world. Common broom's relatives, members of the Genisteae tribe (subgroup) of the pea family are often called brooms as well. The Genisteae includes lupines, gorses, and many others: nearly 1000 species. Many relatives of common broom are in cultivation, with names like French broom (Genista monspessulana), Mediterranean broom (Genista linifolia), and purple broom (Chamaecytisus purpureus). They are quite similar in over shape and flower shape, most have yellow flowers, and they share rather toxic alkaloids.  

Here is dyer's broom, Genista tinctoria, also called dyer's greenweed. Like most of the plants mentioned just above, it was not used to sweep, but named for looking like common broom. Dyer's broom produces a very clear, bright yellow dye and was commercially grown for dyers before the advent of aniline dyes. 

dyer's broom, Genista tinctoria

Other plants used to sweep were given the name broom to say they were used for sweeping. One of those is butcher's broom, Ruscus aculeatus (asparagus family Asparagaceae). This is a Eurasian plant unrelated to common broom, with coarse leaves tightly held to the stem. It was easy to cut a branch of butcher's broom to sweep up the mess in then butcher shop, then discard it. Furthermore, butcher's broom contains antibiotic compounds that assist keeping the work areas clean. (photo)

butcher's broom, Ruscus aculeatus
from Wikimedia

North Americans named a plant of the desert Southwest, Gutierrezia sarothrae, broom snakeweed  (sunflower family, Asteraceae) because Native Americans, and the settlers after them, used it to sweep. The branches are stiff and dense.  I have tried it and it works pretty well. Looking around the Front Range grassland, few other plants would sweep as well. 

Gutierrezia sarothrae, broom snakeweed 

There are other plants with broom in their names, for example broom groundsel Senecio spartoides of the U.S. west (sunflower family Asteraceae), Texas broomweeds Amphiachyris dracunculoides and Amphiachyris amoena (sunflower family Asteraceae), broom baccharis, Baccharis sarcothroides (sunflower family, Asteraceae) of Mexico, and broom tea tree Leptospermum scoparium (pea family, Fabaceae) of Australia. Some of these were definitely used as brooms, broom baccharis for example. The species epithet scoparius/ scoparium means broom-like, suggesting the botanist who named it thought it used as a broom. If they had wanted to say "looks like the plant called common broom," the species epithet would probably be cytisusifolia or something like that. Certainly, some of these brooms may, like members of the Genisteae, be called brooms because they look like the plant, not for being used to sweep. Broom groundsel, for example, which looks a lot like broom snakeweed but does not seem to have been used to sweep. A very large number of American plants were used for sweeping by Native Americans see the list in Moerman's Native American Ethnobotany (link). but few of them have broom in their English or scientific name. That must be true around the world.

It should be noted that common broom, besides naming an important tool, was also the emblem of the Plantagenet kings of England, the name Plantagenet is planta genista, common broom, in Latin. 

I have focused on very simple brooms. Of course brooms are diverse. Some are made with short handles for cleaning surfaces other than floors (I'd call it a whisk broom), broad, heavy brooms are made for sweeping large dirty areas (push brooms), and very soft brooms are made for cleaning walls, and more. Many of these are a long way from common broom. I do not think vacuum cleaners made brooms obsolete, but they took over many of the traditional tasks of brooms.

standard modern sorghum broom

As common tools, brooms developed a complex folklore. They were a symbol of good luck: you could sweep away bad fortune. Brooms were traditional house-warming gifts because of the good luck they bring. Couples jumped over a broom as part of the wedding ceremony or for good luck, in places as diverse as Africa, the U.S. South, and Wales (for more details, follow link) Witches in the European tradition frequently flew on brooms. The witch's broom has a long history and I refer you to why do witches ride brooms? which also reports a number of broom (the tool) customs and beliefs. One, not mentioned there, was a South American superstition that if you passed a broom over an unmarried woman's feet, she would never marry.

Scotch broom, common broom, Cyrtisus scoparius

Broom the plant had its own folklore. You were warned in England:

                   "If you sweep the house with broom in May,

                     You will sweep the head of that house away." (Vickery p. 51)

Folklore also said you could  use broom to control winds. To call wind, invoke the spirits of air and toss broom high into the air, ideally from a mountain-top. To calm winds, burn broom and bury the ashes. 

Sweeping and brooms have a long complex history. Today the plant is a wildflower in its native range and a weed in the rest of the world, no longer the source of an important tool. The tool has been marginalized by vaccuum cleaners. When you see a broom plant, remember that it ws once a very important tool. When you see a broom, consider how far it has come since people cut broom to sweep.  A very rich history. 

Comments and corrections welcome. 

References

Cunningham, S. 2003. Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs. expanded & revised. Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, Minnesota. 

Melaragno, J. 2010. Broom groundsel. October 2010. Deercanyonfolks. com  link Accessed 2/2/25.

Murrell, D. 2008. Superstitions. Reader's Digest Publications. New York, New York.

Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “broom (n.),”  September 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/8037380373. Accessed 2/2/25

Rebman, J. P. and N. C. Roberts. 2012.Baja California Plant Field Guide. 3rd ed. San Diego Natural History Museum Publications, San Diego, California.

Staff writer. 2015. 19th-century innovations perfected familiar broom Columbia Daily Tribune. link Accessed 2/2/25

USDA ARS 2002. Broom snakeweed Gutierrezia sarothrae Pursh USDA NCRS Plant Guide. link Accessed 2/2/25

Vickery, R. 1995. Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore.  Oxford University Press. Oxford, England.

Wikipedia. 2024. Butcher's broom. link Accessed 2/2/25

Kathy Keeler

A Wandering Botanist

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