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Galium aparine
Also called Goosegrass, Cleavers, Catchweed Bedstraw, Goose Grass, Bedstraw, Small Goose Grass, Annual Bedstraw
Cleavers is a fast-growing annual weed that scrambles over the ground and other plants, clinging with tiny hooked hairs. It is grown rarely on purpose and is usually treated as a noxious weed, so the main care goal is control rather than cultivation.
Galium aparine, commonly called cleavers, and also known as bedstraw, catchweed, goose grass, sticky bob, sticky willy, and velcro plant, is an annual, herbaceous plant of the family Rubiaceae.
For some people, contact with the plant can cause skin irritation. Although the plant's hairs are small, they can scratch more sensitive parts of the skin. Numerous such scratches can resemble a rash.
The species is native to a wide region of Europe, North Africa, and Asia, from Britain and the Canary Islands to Japan. It is now naturalized throughout most of the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, some oceanic islands, and scattered locations in Africa. Whether it is native to North America is a matter of some debate, but it is considered native there in most literature. It is considered a noxious weed in many places.
White bedstraw · Alpine Bedstraw · Lamarck's bedstraw · False baby's breath · Woodruff · Roughfruit corn bedstraw · Bedstraw
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Galium aparine by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
