Heath Bedstraw - Galium saxatile

Low to short hairless plant, with a lax prostrate mat of vegetative shoots and spreading or ascending flowering shoots. Stems are smooth, square and much branched. Leaves in whorls of 6 to 8 elliptical and broadest above the middle, the margins with forward pointing bristles. Flowers white, with four petals, 2.5 to 4 mm in lax short branched panicles.

Scrub and pasture on dry acid soils.

June to August.

Perennial

Widespread and fairly frequent in most of Britain.

Local in Leicestershire and Rutland but in suitable locations it can be abundant. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 65 of the 617 tetrads.