Lady's bedstraw
Galium verum
Family · Rubiaceae · Harmless
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The cloud of small yellow honey-scented flowers that fills meadows and banks in high summer. The name is not poetry: the flowers really do curdle milk, and were cheese rennet across Europe before animal rennet was widely available.
Fields and pasture · Uplands · Roadsides and waste ground · Dunes and sand
Also known asyellow bedstraw, cheese rennet
How to tell it
Very narrow needle-like leaves in whorls of eight to twelve around the stem, dark green above. Thousands of tiny yellow flowers in a dense panicle, sweetly honey-scented from a distance. A four-angled stem.
What it is confused with
Shining bedstraw
Galium lucidum
Flower colour settles it: yellow on lady's bedstraw, white on shining bedstraw. Both with whorled leaves and a four-angled stem.
Open sheet →What it is for
Vegetable rennet for cheese, documented across Europe and still alive in some artisan cheeses. The root gives a red dye and the dried plant scents cupboards, which gave it the English name bedstraw.
With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.