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| Galium porrigens |
| Family: Rubiaceae (Madder) |
| Flowers — color: white, size: 1/8", style: 4 petals |
Graceful Bedstraw flowers have four white to yellow-green flowers almost 1/8" wide. Each petal comes gracefully to a point. The flowers form in clusters at leaf nodes on the plant's green stems.
Habit:
I spied some tiny white flowers growing from the skeleton of a black sage. The flowers and leaf arrangement resembled common bedstraw, but these green stems grew from leaf nodes on reddish woody stems woven through the dead sage branches. Each shoot will emit side branches that divide again. Graceful Bedstraw's stems and leaves are covered in fine sticky hairs. This perennial uses them to cling to other plants. Four leaves, 1/8–1/2" long, attach in a whorl around the stem. The few plant samples I've seen range from one to two feet in height and width.
Common Bedstraw has greener stems and more leaves in each whorl. It tends to form long viny growth compared ot the multiple branching of Graceful. Phlox-Leaved Bedstraw is bushy with spine-like leaves that hide its stems, plus a low, compact habit.