Galium albumMill.

white bedstraw

WFO wfo-0000968234 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Galium album, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. a Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205538689

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 41 botanical countries

Regions where Galium album is native: Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Sudan-South Sudan, Tunisia, Lebanon-Syria, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, West Siberia, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Krym, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, South European Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine AlgeriaLibyaMoroccoSudan-South SudanTunisiaLebanon-SyriaTranscaucasusTürkiyeWest SiberiaAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyKrymNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNW. Balkan Pen.PolandPortugalRomaniaSiciliaSouth European RussiaSpainSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine Sardegna
Native distribution of Galium album, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
East European Russia RUE
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
Netherlands NET
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Libya LBY
Morocco MOR
Sudan-South Sudan SUD
Tunisia TUN
Lebanon-Syria LBS ASIA-TEMPERATE
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
West Siberia WSB

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 227 in flower of 268 examined

Proportion of examined Galium album in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 0 3 too few examined
Apr 1 15 7% 1% to 30%
May 31 46 67% 53% to 79%
Jun 89 93 96% 89% to 98%
Jul 55 55 100% 93% to 100%
Aug 23 25 92% 75% to 98%
Sep 13 14 93% 69% to 99%
Oct 13 14 93% 69% to 99%
Nov 2 3 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Galium album observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 227 of 268 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,998 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -10.4 °C -3.6 °C 3.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.7 °C 22.8 °C 26.2 °C
Annual rainfall 565 mm 754 mm 1,396 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 88 mm 139 mm 269 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,998 research-grade observations of Galium album that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 44 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Galium album f. pubescens (Schrad.) Ancev
  • Galium album subsp. suberectum (Klokov) E.Michalkova
  • Galium album var. petraeum (Schur) Soó
  • Galium album var. praticola (Heinr.Braun) Michalk.
  • Galium dumetorum Jord.
  • Galium elatum subsp. erectum Berher
  • Galium elatum var. dumetorum (Jord.) Rouy
  • Galium erectum Huds.
  • Galium erectum var. alpinum Timb.-Lagr.
  • Galium fagetorum Klokov
  • Galium fasciculatum Klokov
  • Galium firmum var. euboeum Halácsy
  • Galium gerardi var. hosmariense Pau
  • Galium gerardi var. parviflorum Pau
  • Galium juzepczukii Pobed.
  • Galium lucidum var. guilhelmi Pau & Sennen
  • Galium mixtum Stranski
  • Galium mollugo f. pycnotrichum Heinr.Braun
  • Galium mollugo subsp. album (Mill.) Tzvelev
  • Galium mollugo subsp. dumetorum (Jord.) Briq.
  • Galium mollugo subsp. erectum Syme
  • Galium mollugo subsp. pycnotrichum (Heinr.Braun) O.Schwarz
  • Galium mollugo var. alpinum (Timb.-Lagr.) Lange
  • Galium mollugo var. anatolicum K.Koch

and 20 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.