Ulex europaeus

Common Gorse (Kurt Stüber, Wikipedia Commons)

Ulex europaeus is a plant that is better known as the “common gorse” (OK, I’m no botanist, and I don’t live in Europe where this plant flourishes, so I don’t really know it that way, but I guess some people do!). When we extract material from the seeds of this plant (we call the extract a “lectin“), that substance can act just like an antibody against the H antigen. Ulex lectin will react more strongly with RBCs that have more H, such as group O and group A₂ RBCs, while reacting much less strongly (if at all) against RBCs with very little H, such as group A₁ and A₁B. Ulex is used much less than the other famous blood bank lectin, Dolichos biflorus.