Slender, flexible, 1–5 foot long, stems spread vine-like to form a dense groundcover or mound into a tangled mass covering low vegetation. Backwards-facing, hooked prickles cover the brittle, 4-sided stems, which easily break and attach to animal fur or clothes to scatter the bur-like seeds. Note the narrow leaves are whorled around widely separated nodes in sets of 6–8. Clusters of several small, white flowers on short stalks grow from the leaf whorls. Also called stickywilly and catchweed bedstraw.

FLOWER: April–September. Clusters of 1–3 tiny flowers, 1/8 inch wide (3 mm), with 4 white, pointed petals, grow on short stalks (peduncles) from the leaf whorls. Fruit a pair of bristly capsules each containing one nutlet with hooked (not straight) hairs.

LEAVES: Whorled in sets of 6–8. Blades narrow, linear to lance-shaped, 3/8–3 inches long (1–8 cm) by 3/8 inch wide (1 cm), with one prominent central vein; the base tapers to the stem and the tip has a small, sharp point; margins lined with ciliate hairs, top surface bristly with hooked-tipped hairs.

HABITAT: Dry to moist sandy, gravelly soils; foothills, mesas, canyons, slopes, meadows, disturbed areas; pinyon-juniper woodlands, ponderosa-Douglas fir, spruce-fir forests.

ELEVATION: 4,600–10,000 feet.

RANGE: Widespread in every state.

SIMILAR SPECIES: NM has 13 species of Galium, or bedstraw. Three-petal bedstraw, G. trifidum, in much the same range, has trailing, tangled stems with hooked hairs, flowers with 3 petals, smooth nutlets, and 4 round-tipped leaves per whorl. The perennial Mexican bedstraw, G. mexicanum (var. asperrimum in NM), in much the same range, has whorls of 5–8 leaves, stems with hooked hairs, and short, straight (not hooked) nutlet hairs. The widespread perennial, Northern Bedstraw, G. boreal, has upright, mostly smooth, branching stems with no hooked hairs, and whorls of 4 leaves.

NM COUNTIES: Widespread in NM from foothills to mountains in low- to high-elevation habitats: Bernalillo, Catron, Cibola, Colfax, Dona Ana, Grant, Hidalgo, Lincoln, Los Alamos, Luna, Mora, Otero, Rio Arriba, San Juan, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Taos, Torrance, Union.