Galium mollugoL.

White bedstrawfalse baby's breathhedge bedstrawhedge-bedstraw

WFO wfo-0000969499 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Galium mollugo, photographed by Tatiana Strus
fig. a Tatiana Strus, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205907140

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
1070551
Filed as
Galium mollugo L.
Det. by
D. E. Atha 2007-01-01
Collected
D. E. Atha 2007-05-25
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 43 botanical countries

Regions where Galium mollugo is native: Libya, Morocco, Altay, Buryatiya, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Tuva, West Siberia, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, East European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Krym, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Norway, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine LibyaMoroccoAltayBuryatiyaIrkutskKrasnoyarskNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTuvaWest SiberiaAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyHungaryItalyKrymNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNorwayNW. Balkan Pen.PolandPortugalRomaniaSiciliaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine Sardegna
Native distribution of Galium mollugo, 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
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
Netherlands NET
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Norway NOR
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Buryatiya BRY
Irkutsk IRK
Krasnoyarsk KRA
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Tuva TVA
West Siberia WSB
Libya LBY AFRICA
Morocco MOR

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 871 in flower of 1,713 examined

Proportion of examined Galium mollugo in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 2 21 10% 3% to 29%
Feb 0 12 0% 0% to 24%
Mar 0 36 0% 0% to 10%
Apr 0 248 0% 0% to 2%
May 38 322 12% 9% to 16%
Jun 372 462 81% 77% to 84%
Jul 239 270 89% 84% to 92%
Aug 91 115 79% 71% to 86%
Sep 72 99 73% 63% to 81%
Oct 43 85 51% 40% to 61%
Nov 14 33 42% 27% to 59%
Dec 0 10 0% 0% to 28%

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Galium mollugo 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. 871 of 1,713 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 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.

When it blooms, where you are 1 state

StatePeaksObservations in flower
Vermont Aug 94

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,958 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -19.3 °C -10.9 °C 0.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.4 °C 23.0 °C 27.9 °C
Annual rainfall 492 mm 685 mm 1,272 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 63 mm 109 mm 259 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,958 research-grade observations of Galium mollugo 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 112 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.

  • Galion molluginum St.-Lag.
  • Galium album Garsault
  • Galium amani Kotschy ex Boiss.
  • Galium aristatum Sm.
  • Galium attenuatum Klokov & Zaver.
  • Galium beilanense Kotschy ex Boiss.
  • Galium besseri Klokov
  • Galium bielzii Schur
  • Galium bocconei Ten. ex Steud.
  • Galium boreale var. alpinum Gaudin
  • Galium boreale var. latifolium Wimm. & Grab.
  • Galium boreale var. medium Gaudin
  • Galium calcareum (Albov) Pobed.
  • Galium capsiriense Jeanb. ex Timb.-Lagr.
  • Galium chloranthum (Schur) Soó
  • Galium corrudifolium Willk.
  • Galium corrudifolium var. pallidulum (Jord.) Rouy
  • Galium diffusum D.Don
  • Galium elatum Thuill.
  • Galium elatum var. clivale Fr.
  • Galium elatum var. genuinum Rouy
  • Galium elatum var. insubricum (Gaudin) St.-Lag.
  • Galium elatum var. latifolium Leers
  • Galium elatum var. umbrosum Gren.

and 88 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.