Description:

• Perennial herbs or annuals; stems erect, creeping or climbing, often distinctly 4-angled, glabrous, hairy or with recurved prickles
• Leaves and stipules similar, in whorls of 4-10, (sub)sessile, blades linear, lanceolate to (ob)ovate, mostly with a prominent midvein (1-nerved)
• Flowers 4-merous, bisexual (and protandrous), rarely male and female, in axillary and/or terminal many- to few-flowered cymes
• Calyx with lobes obsolete
• Corolla mostly rotate, greenish (yellow), creamy white to bright yellow; lobes ovate to triangular, acute to acuminate
• Stamens: anthers exserted
• Ovary 2-locular, 1 ovule in each chamber, crowned by an often 2-lobed disc; style branches 2, joined below; stigmas capitate
• Fruit dry, glabrous or variously hairy, dehiscing into (1)2 (sub)globose or reniform 1-seeded mericarps
• Seeds round on dorsal side, ± excavated on ventral side; 1 mericarp occasionally aborted
• x = 11 (8, 10, 12) (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Galium L.
  • Linnaeus: 105 (1753)
  • Sonder: 35 (1865)
  • Puff: 65 (1986)
  • Puff: 195 (1989)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 400, cosmopolitan
• Southern Africa: Species 12, widespread but in Namibia known only from the south, and absent from Botswana