Small bedstraw

Galium trifidum is a slender, weakly ascending perennial herb of the Rubiaceae family, typically 10 to 50 centimetres tall, with delicate, four-angled stems that are smooth or slightly retrorsely roughened on the angles and often scrambling among other low vegetation. The narrowly oblanceolate to linear leaves are arranged in whorls of four, occasionally five or six, each leaf 4 to 15 millimetres long and 1 to 3 millimetres wide, with a single midvein, a blunt apex and an entire margin that may bear minute backward-pointing prickles. The inconspicuous, white, four-lobed flowers, only about 1.5 to 2 millimetres across, are borne singly or in small few-flowered cymes on slender axillary peduncles in summer. The fruit consists of paired, smooth, glabrous, dry mericarps that separate at maturity. Native to wet meadows, marshes, bog edges, fens and shaded streambanks across the cool-temperate and boreal zones of North America, Eurasia and parts of South America, it favours damp, mossy, peaty or mucky ground in partial shade.