Galium palustre L.

Perennial, usually drying dark brown or black; stems slender, weak and straggling, to c. 60 cm long, glabrous, or scabridulous on the acute angles. Lvs and stipules in whorls of 4–(6), subsessile or with short petiole to c. 1 mm long, 3–15 × 0.7–4.5 mm, linear, narrow-elliptic or oblanceolate, generally glabrous; margins flat, sometimes scabridulous; apex usually obtuse, sometimes subacute. Lvs of uppermost nodes often smaller. Cymes small, loose, glabrous or nearly so, often 2–5 from same axis, each with c. 3–7 fls, usually aggregated into panicles of up to 20 fls; peduncles very variable in length, to c. 2 cm long; pedicels up to 3 mm long, divaricating at fruiting; bracts leaflike at base of infl., either very reduced or 0 toward apex. Corolla 2–3–(3.5) mm diam., white; lobes ovate or ovate-oblong, acute or mucronulate. Mericarps 0.8–1.2 mm diam., globular, ± papillate.

[From: Webb et al. (1988) Flora of New Zealand. Volume 4.]

Flowering: Nov.–Apr.