Galium aparine

"Cleavers: They cleave."

- Rix White

Description
This generally unassuming plant that, for most people, blends in with the rest of the weeds in yards, goes unnoticed until you find it grabbing your pant legs and your socks. Cleavers can creep along the ground and along the tops of other plants, or it can grow upright on its own, to a point. Their weak stems won't bear their weight once they get too high. They have tiny hooks on their leaves and stems that cause them to cleave (hence the common name) to almost anything as if they were made of Velcro. They use this sticking action to help them climb over and grow with the surrounding vegetation to reach the sunlight.

Aside from their "grabby" nature (as Green Deane points out at eattheweeds.com: "You don’t find Goosegrass. It finds you.") you can identify this plant by its bright green color, square-shaped stems, narrow, to  leaves in s of six to eight leaves. You will also notice regular spacing between each set of whorls on the stem so that the effect is not unlike a bunch of tiny, green umbrellas stacked one on top of another.

"You don’t find Goosegrass. It finds you."

- Green Deane

They can grow to be over three feet tall (or long, if they are scrambling over the rest of the weeds), but you can also find them growing to around a foot tall.

The flowers look like tiny, white, 4-pointed stars emerging from the tops of fuzzy little ovaries that ironically resemble a pair of green testicles.

Edible Uses
Cleavers is edible raw or cooked. However, due to the hooks, people sometimes find the raw texture offputing. You probably won't find any recipes dedicated to cleavers alone, but many wild herb gatherers that I have met gladly throw them in with the rest of the salad and pot herbs they gather (although, I imagine this has more to do with their medicinal and nutritive value than with their taste or texture.)

Euell Gibbons suggests steaming it in a collander above a pot of boiling water for five minutes.

Aside from usage as a green, the mature seeds can be used as a coffee substitute. The plant is a member of the coffee family, after all!

Medicinal Uses
TBD

Practical Uses
TBD