About Galium verum L.
Galium verum, commonly called lady's bedstraw or yellow bedstraw, is a herbaceous perennial flowering plant in the Rubiaceae family. It is widely distributed across most of Europe, North Africa, and temperate Asia, ranging from Israel, Lebanon and Turkey to Japan and Kamchatka. It has become naturalized in Tasmania, New Zealand, Canada, and the northern half of the United States.
This is an upright plant that produces stiff stems growing 15 to 120 centimetres (5.9 to 47.2 inches) tall. Its leaves are 1 to 3 centimetres (0.39 to 1.18 inches) long and 2 millimetres (0.079 inches) broad, are shiny dark green with hairs on the lower surface, and grow in whorls of 8 to 12. The flowers are 2 to 3 millimetres (0.079 to 0.118 inches) in diameter, yellow, and borne in dense clusters. This species is sometimes mistaken for Galium odoratum, a species with traditional culinary uses.
In medieval Europe, dried Galium verum was used to stuff mattresses, because the plant's coumarin scent works as a flea repellent. The flowers were also used to coagulate milk during cheese making — this function gives the plant its name, which comes from the Greek word γάλα (gala), meaning 'milk' — and in Gloucestershire, the flowers were used to color the cheese double Gloucester. The plant is also used to make red madder-like and yellow dyes. In Denmark, the plant (called gul snerre locally) is traditionally used to infuse spirits to produce the uniquely Danish drink bjæsk.
