Galium humifusumM.Bieb.

spreading bedstraw

WFO wfo-0000969165 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Galium humifusum, photographed by Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky)
fig. a Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky), CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205703647

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 25 botanical countries

Regions where Galium humifusum is native: Afghanistan, Cyprus, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Lebanon-Syria, Mongolia, North Caucasus, Palestine, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Xinjiang, Pakistan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, East European Russia, Greece, Krym, Romania, South European Russia, Ukraine AfghanistanCyprusIranIraqKazakhstanKirgizstanLebanon-SyriaMongoliaNorth CaucasusPalestineTranscaucasusTürkiyeTurkmenistanUzbekistanXinjiangPakistanBelarusBulgariaCentral European RussiaEast European RussiaGreeceKrymRomaniaSouth European RussiaUkraine
Native distribution of Galium humifusum, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
Cyprus CYP
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Kazakhstan KAZ
Kirgizstan KGZ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Mongolia MON
North Caucasus NCS
Palestine PAL
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Turkmenistan TKM
Uzbekistan UZB
Xinjiang CHX
Belarus BLR EUROPE
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
East European Russia RUE
Greece GRC
Krym KRY
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Ukraine UKR
Pakistan PAK ASIA-TROPICAL

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 125 in flower of 149 examined

Proportion of examined Galium humifusum in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 0 too few examined
Feb 1 1 too few examined
Mar 0 1 too few examined
Apr 1 10 10% 2% to 40%
May 3 11 27% 10% to 57%
Jun 10 10 100% 72% to 100%
Jul 19 19 100% 83% to 100%
Aug 27 29 93% 78% to 98%
Sep 24 24 100% 86% to 100%
Oct 26 29 90% 74% to 96%
Nov 12 13 92% 67% to 99%
Dec 2 2 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Galium humifusum 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. 125 of 149 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 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 1,684 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -11.8 °C -5.7 °C 1.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.5 °C 26.7 °C 30.5 °C
Annual rainfall 354 mm 551 mm 950 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 52 mm 102 mm 173 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 1,684 research-grade observations of Galium humifusum 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 35 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.

  • Asperula besserana Kolk.
  • Asperula besseriana Klokov
  • Asperula cincinnata Klokov
  • Asperula conferta (K.Koch) Stankov
  • Asperula debilis Ledeb.
  • Asperula dissitiflora Post
  • Asperula ghautensis Post
  • Asperula humifusa (M.Bieb.) Besser
  • Asperula humifusa f. glaberrima Nábelek
  • Asperula humifusa f. hirsuta Nábelek
  • Asperula humifusa var. aspera Regel & Herder
  • Asperula humifusa var. conferta K.Koch
  • Asperula humifusa var. debilis (Ledeb.) Regel & Herder
  • Asperula humifusa var. debilis (Ledeb.) Nyman
  • Asperula humifusa var. diffusa K.Koch
  • Asperula humifusa var. pycnantha (Boiss.) Boiss.
  • Asperula humifusa var. trichantha Regel & Herder
  • Asperula insuave Pobed.
  • Asperula insuavis Pobed.
  • Asperula pycnantha Boiss.
  • Asperula pycnantha var. lasiocarpa Boiss.
  • Asperula turkestanica Nevski
  • Galium apricum Sieber ex Steud.
  • Galium cincinnatum (Klokov) Ostapko

and 11 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.