Nature · Wildflowers & flowers

Lady's bedstraw

Native · flowers Jun–Sep · dry meadows, verges, dunes and cliff tops

Galium verum — Rubiaceae

A sprawling perennial whose frothy clusters of tiny bright-yellow flowers smell of honey, and whose dried stems smell of new-mown hay. It was stuffed into mattresses as a soft, springy and flea-repellent bedding, and legend says the Virgin Mary gave birth on a bed of it. It also curdled milk for cheese and yielded a red dye from its roots.

How to spot them

▸Dense, frothy panicles of tiny four-petalled bright yellow flowers, honey-scented
▸Narrow, dark green, needle-like leaves in whorls of 8–12 around the stem, with rolled-back edges and black when dried
▸Stems square, creeping among grass and then sending up flowering shoots, up to about 60 cm
▸The only common yellow-flowered bedstraw; hedge bedstraw and heath bedstraw are white, and cleavers is clinging and sticky
▸Crosswort is also yellow but has hairy, broader leaves in whorls of four, with flowers in small tiers

How to know it

Frothy yellow flowers smelling of honey above whorls of needle-like leaves; the dried stems smell of hay and were once used to stuff mattresses

Lady's bedstraw, Galium verum.

Medieval legend held that the Virgin Mary gave birth on a bed of this plant and bracken; the bracken refused to acknowledge the child and lost its flower, while this plant flowered gold

Lady's bedstraw (Plantlife).

Once used to curdle milk in cheese-making and to colour Double Gloucester, it has the old names 'cheese rennet' and 'cheese renning'

Lady's bedstraw (Plantlife and Grieve).

Its roots yield a red dye like that of madder, used in the Hebrides for wool

Lady's bedstraw — a relative of madder, Rubia tinctorum.

In Norse tradition, Scandinavians used it as a sedative in childbirth and called it 'Frigg's grass'

Lady's bedstraw (Plantlife).

Quick-fire facts

•Family Rubiaceae, the madder and coffee family; Galium comes from the Greek gala, milk, because it curdles milk
•Plantlife gives a flowering season of June to September and a honey scent; the dried plant smells of hay
•Popular for stuffing beds before modern mattresses, being soft, springy and sweet-scented, and astringent enough to deter fleas
•Christian legend made it one of the 'cradle herbs' in the manger at Bethlehem; another tale has Mary giving birth on a bed of bedstraw and bracken
•In Norse tradition it was linked with childbirth; Scandinavians used it as a sedative for women in labour and called it Frigg's grass
•Curdles milk, hence 'cheese rennet'; in Gloucestershire it coloured Double Gloucester, and Cheshire cheesemakers used it in rennet
•The roots give a red dye (as its cousin madder does), used in the Hebrides for woollens
•Other names: yellow bedstraw, maid's hair, petty mugget, cheese renning
•Related to cleavers, Galium aparine, or 'sticky Willy'

Drill it — 7 cards

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Sources

Plantlife — Lady's Bedstraw (Galium verum)
Mrs M. Grieve — A Modern Herbal: Bedstraw, Lady's