Galium rivale(Sm.) Griseb.

WFO wfo-0000970034 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Galium rivale, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. a Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-10 / obs. 162725079
Galium rivale, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. b Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158354402
Galium rivale, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. c Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 152264034
Galium rivale, photographed by Силаева Татьяна Борисовна
fig. d Силаева Татьяна Борисовна, CC0 1.0 / obs. 147461338
Galium rivale, photographed by Силаева Татьяна Борисовна
fig. e Силаева Татьяна Борисовна, CC0 1.0 / obs. 145140936
Galium rivale, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. f Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 142686358
Galium rivale, photographed by Maxim Shashkov
fig. g Maxim Shashkov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 97458110
Galium rivale, photographed by Eugene Gavrilov
fig. h Eugene Gavrilov, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 92473120

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 rivale is native: East Aegean Is., Iran, Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, West Siberia, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, East European Russia, Greece, Hungary, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine East Aegean Is.IranLebanon-SyriaPalestineTranscaucasusTürkiyeWest SiberiaAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaEast European RussiaGreeceHungaryNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine
Native distribution of Galium rivale, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
East European Russia RUE
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
East Aegean Is. EAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
Iran IRN
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
West Siberia WSB

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 99 in flower of 112 examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Galium rivale 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. 99 of 112 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 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 1,978 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -15.2 °C -10.8 °C -6.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.1 °C 23.2 °C 24.8 °C
Annual rainfall 496 mm 651 mm 726 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 80 mm 104 mm 123 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 1,978 research-grade observations of Galium rivale 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 5 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 rivalis Sm.
  • Asperula rivalis var. schelkownikowiana Bordz.
  • Asperula rivalis var. schelkwnikowianum Bordz.
  • Galium chinense A.Spreng.
  • Galium schelkownikowianum (Bordz.) Holub

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. 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.