Galium bungei

Galium bungei is a slender perennial herb in the madder family (Rubiaceae), widely distributed across East Asia in China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, and the Russian Far East, where it grows in grasslands, forest margins, scrub, and waste places from lowlands to mid-elevation mountains. Plants produce numerous slender, weak, often decumbent four-angled stems 10-50 cm long that are glabrous to minutely scabrous on the angles. The leaves are arranged in whorls of four (rarely six) along the stem; each leaf is narrowly oblanceolate to linear-oblong, 0.5-3 cm long and 1-4 mm wide, sessile, with a single midvein, an acute tip, and slightly rough margins. Inflorescences are loose terminal and axillary cymes bearing many small flowers; each flower is 1-2 mm across with four pale yellow to yellowish-green spreading lobes and four short stamens. The fruit is a dry indehiscent schizocarp of two globose mericarps about 1 mm in diameter, smooth or finely papillose, and dispersed by gravity or animals. The species is morphologically variable and several intraspecific varieties have been described.