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.
Open sheet →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.