Rough Bedstraw

(Galium asprellum)

 

   

 

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.

 

Rough Bedstraw (Galium asprellum Michx.)

Identification: Flowers white or greenish-white, small, with 4 pointed petals. Flowers on long flower stalks (pedicels), heavily branched, and in irregular clusters. Fruit smooth. Stem square, with rough feeling, backward projecting spinules. Stem weak, heavily branched, prostrate on the ground or climbing on other plants. Leaves mostly in whorls of 6, elongate. Leaf apex with a sharp point.

Distribution: Newfoundland to western Ontario, southward to Missouri and North Carolina.

Habitat: Rough Bedstraw is found in thickets and on wet soils.

Flowering period: July to September.

Similar Species:  Fragrant Bedstraw, another plant with leaves in whorls of 6 lacks recurved spinules on the stem. The leaves are generally larger. Cleavers, a species of Galium with heavily recurved spinules on the stem has its leaves in whorls of 8 and is not as heavily branched.

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