Cleavers
Galium aparine
Family · Rubiaceae · Harmless
The herb that sticks to clothes and that every child has thrown at someone's back. It climbs hedges held by thousands of microscopic hooks, without a single tendril.
Roadsides and waste ground · Oak woods · Fields and pasture · Town and roadside
Also known asgoosegrass, sticky willy, catchweed
How to tell it
A four-angled stem covered in hooks that grip when you run a finger upwards. Narrow leaves in whorls of six to eight around the stem. Tiny white flowers. Round hook-covered fruits, in pairs.
What it is confused with
Wild madder
Rubia peregrina
Both cling and both are in the same family. Wild madder is woody, leathery-leaved and evergreen, and its prickles are large and genuinely scratch; cleavers is a soft annual herb.
What it is for
The tender tips are eaten cooked before flowering, and the roasted fruits were a coffee substitute, which makes sense: it is in the coffee family. It also served as a milk strainer, thanks to its texture.
Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.
With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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