Nearctica - Eastern Wildflowers - Rubiaceae

Cleavers

(Galium aparine)

Color Photograph: Copyright Nearctica.com, Inc.

Line Drawing: Britton, N.L., and A. Brown. 1913. An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States and Canada, Second Edition.

Cleavers (Galium aparine L.)

Identification: Flowers white, small, with 4 pointed petals. Flowers on long flower stalks (pedicels), arising from the axils of the leaf whorls. Fruit with hooked spines. Stem square, with rough feeling, backward projecting spinules. Stem weak, weakly branched, prostrate on the ground or climbing on other plants. Leaves mostly in whorls of 8, elongate. Leaf apex with a sharp point.

Distribution: Throughout most of North America. Also native to Europe and northern Asia.

Habitat: Aparine is most commonly found crawling over bushes along forest edges and in thickets. The species is also found in wet fields and clearings.

Flowering period: July to September.

Similar Species: Cleavers is easy to recognize. It is almost invariably the bedstraw species clinging to your clothes, trying to trip you up, and leaving little spiny fruits all over you as you walk through thickets and clearings. Rough Bedstraw is also spiny, but has leaves in whorls of 6 and is much more heavily branched. Wild Madder is smooth without the backward projecting spinules.