Galium aparine Seeds | Clivers Root
LATIN NAME: Galium aparine
COMMON NAME: Cleavers
Plant Profile
Cleavers is a low, scrambling annual that climbs through neighbouring bushes and crops by means of the hooked bristles on its stems and leaf edges rather than by tendrils or twining. It forms a loose, sprawling mat that can reach a metre or more when it finds something to lean on, and it melts away by midsummer once it has set seed.
The stem is distinctly four-angled, a feature it shares with the mints though it is no mint, and the narrow leaves are arranged in whorls of six to eight around each node. The bristles point backward, so the plant slides one way through a hedge and clings the other, which is exactly how it hitches a ride on passing animals. The bristles that give cleavers its grip are so effective that children have long used the plant to play sticky darts on clothing, which is part of how the weed spreads so reliably through play and through farming. The same bristles make the fresh plant rough to handle, so wear gloves if you plan to gather a large amount for the pot or the juice.
Cleavers sits in the same family as madder, the plant that gives a true red dye, but it lacks madder’s perennial root and climbs by bristle rather than twining. Both are Rubiaceae, and so is coffee, which is the kinship that lends cleavers its old nickname of goosegrass and its place in the bedstraw tribe, even though it tastes nothing like the beverage.
Science & Biotechnology
The plant’s modest chemistry is enough to explain its long use as a spring green and its caution in stronger preparations.
Fresh cleavers contains asperuloside, an iridoid glycoside that, as the plant dries, converts into paeonol, the compound that gives dried cleavers its characteristic coumarin-like scent. This change on drying is one of the small chemical facts that separates a knowledgeable grower from someone who assumed the fresh and dried herb are identical.
The juice of the young plant carries tannins and a cooling, almost cucumber-like quality that made it a traditional spring tonic and a foraged green. We describe the history rather than prescribe it, because the bristly tissue is rough on the throat if eaten in quantity and the plant is best used young.
Uses & Benefits
Cleavers has worn several hats, and only one of them belongs in the kitchen.
Young cleavers tips are eaten as a cooked green or blended into a spring juice, stripped of their bristles by chopping or straining, and the plant was a common pot herb before cultivated greens took over. Cleavers also has a place in the old tradition of spring tonics, used as a green addition to soups and as a strained juice mixed with other foraged plants, though it should be eaten in moderation because of the rough tissue. The plant fades by midsummer, so the window for gathering the tender tops is short and early in the season.
Its cousin lady’s bedstraw was used to curdle milk and colour cheese, but cleavers is too bristly and watery for that job, so it stayed a green and a medicine rather than a dairy tool. The name bedstraw records the older use of the softer Galium species for stuffing mattresses, a comfort role this sticky annual never claimed.
Growing from Seed
Cleavers is less grown than tolerated, and the management question is usually how to keep it where you want it.
Sow the small seed in cool, moist, shady ground in autumn or early spring, because the plant likes rich, damp soil at the hedge base and resents dry, hot beds. Thin the seedlings by height, and expect the clump to sprawl, so give it a support crop or a corner where it can climb without smothering choice plants.
Because the bristly fruits stick to everything, a few neglected plants will scatter seed across the garden, so cut the clumps back before the round, bristly fruits ripen if you want to keep it contained. A practical approach is to let cleavers occupy one hedge base and keep it honest with a pair of shears, cutting it back the moment the first fruits begin to form. Left alone it will climb a metre through a shrub, but managed it stays a low, green, bee-friendly edge plant that asks for almost nothing from the gardener. A little Kentucky coffeetree in the background makes a fitting Rubiaceae-family companion for the story, though cleavers itself is happiest as a low, self-sown edge plant.
Our Take
I let cleavers run along the base of the hedge where the bristles do no harm and the bees visit the tiny white flowers, and I pull it by the handful for the spring pot.
Related Reading
Gardeners who grow Cleavers often pair it with these related subjects: