Galium hypocarpium

Galium hypocarpium is a slender perennial herb in the Rubiaceae native to the neotropics, with a broad distribution from Mexico through Central America and the Andes to Bolivia, growing in cool, moist montane forest, cloud forest, and shaded paramo edges from about 1500 to 3500 metres elevation. Plants are weak-stemmed and decumbent to scrambling, with quadrangular, finely retrorsely scabrous stems 20 to 80 centimetres long that cling weakly to surrounding vegetation. The leaves are arranged in whorls of four (two true leaves and two leaf-like stipules) around each node, elliptic to ovate-lanceolate, 0.5 to 2 centimetres long, with entire ciliate margins and a single mid-vein. Small four-merous greenish white to pale yellow flowers are borne singly or in few-flowered axillary cymes; corollas are rotate with a very short tube. The distinctive fruit, suggested by the specific epithet, is a small fleshy, glabrous, bright orange to red drupe-like schizocarp typically with one developed mericarp.