Awned bedstraw

Galium aristatum, the awned bedstraw, is a perennial herb of the madder family Rubiaceae, native to montane regions of southern and central Europe, particularly the Alps, Apennines and the Balkans. Plants arise from a slender creeping rhizome and produce erect to ascending quadrangular stems 30 to 70 centimetres tall. The leaves are arranged in whorls of six to eight around each node — the typical bedstraw arrangement — and are lanceolate to narrowly elliptic with a single midvein and a small awn-like apical point that gives the species its epithet. Margins and midribs may bear minute backward-pointing prickles. Inflorescences are diffuse terminal panicles of numerous tiny white four-lobed flowers, each only a few millimetres across. Fruits are small, paired, smooth glabrous mericarps. The species flowers in summer and frequents woodland margins, scrub and montane meadows.