Lamarck's bedstraw

Galium divaricatum Pourr. ex Lam. (Rubiaceae), Lamarck's bedstraw, is a slender annual herb 10-40 cm tall, native to the Mediterranean basin, southern Europe and parts of western Asia, where it occurs on dry rocky slopes, fallow ground and open scrub. Stems are diffusely branched, four-angled and weakly retrorse-scabrid on the angles, often forming a tangled mat. The leaves are arranged in whorls of four to six along the stem, narrowly oblanceolate to linear, 3-8 mm long, single-veined and minutely mucronate. Inflorescences are diffuse, widely spreading cymes of very small flowers; each flower has a four-lobed, greenish-white to purplish corolla less than 1 mm across, and the calyx is reduced. The fruit is a small smooth glabrous schizocarp of two nearly globose mericarps about 1 mm in diameter, lacking the hooked bristles of G. aparine. It is generally considered a minor ruderal of low ecological prominence.