GORSE, WHIN, FURZE - AJONCS? in the languedoc

We've been out walking today in sunny N.Ireland and the gorse along the coast is in full flower. I have often wondered why it has so many names; gorze, whin, furze, broom and having consulted Wikipedia all I have learnt is that at least broom isn't quite the same thing as it doesn't have spikey thorny bits.


So I now know that this photo taken on the mountains above our house in the Herault is broom, so would it be ajoncs? that is the french for gorse, or not? I very, very rarely bump into anyone when I'm up in the hills so the chances of finding a passing rambler, pointing at a bush and inanely saying 'ajoncs, ajoncs?' are mercifully remote - so I may never know! But thanks to Wiki I have also learnt the flowers are edible and jolly nice on a salad, if only we'd known earlier that would be tea sorted. I wonder if they have the flavour of coconut as thats the scent the air is heavy with when walking in the whin on a warm sunny day.

I still don't understand the workings of the blogysphere, whatever order I add images they always appear some other way around, nothing to do with their alphabetic titles or numbers either - that's why 9 times out of 10 I only have one photo per blogette. But todays extras are a couple of my gorse paintings from a couple of years ago, looking a bit washed out on my laptop, hopefully nice and bright on the world wide web.