Galium rubioidesL.

European bedstraw

WFO wfo-0000970061 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Galium rubioides, photographed by Татьяна Горбушина
fig. a Татьяна Горбушина, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205793532

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 29 botanical countries

Regions where Galium rubioides is native: Altay, Amur, Buryatiya, China North-Central, Chita, Irkutsk, Kazakhstan, Manchuria, North Caucasus, Primorye, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, West Siberia, Xinjiang, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, East European Russia, Hungary, Krym, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, NW. Balkan Pen., Romania, South European Russia, Ukraine AltayAmurBuryatiyaChina North-CentralChitaIrkutskKazakhstanManchuriaNorth CaucasusPrimoryeTranscaucasusTürkiyeWest SiberiaXinjiangAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBulgariaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaEast European RussiaHungaryKrymNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNW. Balkan Pen.RomaniaSouth European RussiaUkraine
Native distribution of Galium rubioides, 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
Austria AUT EUROPE
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
East European Russia RUE
Hungary HUN
Krym KRY
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Amur AMU
Buryatiya BRY
China North-Central CHN
Chita CTA
Irkutsk IRK
Kazakhstan KAZ
Manchuria CHM
North Caucasus NCS
Primorye PRM
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
West Siberia WSB
Xinjiang CHX

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 59 in flower of 88 examined

Proportion of examined Galium rubioides in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 1 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 0 0 too few examined
Apr 0 0 too few examined
May 1 8 13% 2% to 47%
Jun 37 50 74% 60% to 84%
Jul 14 16 88% 64% to 97%
Aug 5 7 71% 36% to 92%
Sep 2 3 too few examined
Oct 0 0 too few examined
Nov 0 1 too few examined
Dec 0 2 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Galium rubioides 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. 59 of 88 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 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 1,934 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -19.0 °C -10.6 °C -3.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.3 °C 24.3 °C 27.3 °C
Annual rainfall 453 mm 588 mm 1,000 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 57 mm 101 mm 187 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 1,934 research-grade observations of Galium rubioides 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 24 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 articulatum Lam.
  • Galium articulatum var. pygmaeum (DC.) Nyman
  • Galium boreale f. exoletum (Klokov) Soó
  • Galium boreale subsp. exoletum (Klokov) Soják
  • Galium boreale subsp. mugodsharicum (Pobed.) Soják
  • Galium boreale subsp. rubioides (L.) Čelak.
  • Galium boreale var. rubioides (L.) Čelak.
  • Galium dasypodum Klokov
  • Galium exoletum Klokov
  • Galium geniculatum Roem. & Schult.
  • Galium mugodsharicum Pobed.
  • Galium nervosum var. rubioides (L.) Lam.
  • Galium physocarpum Ledeb.
  • Galium praeboreale Klokov
  • Galium pygmaeum DC.
  • Galium rubioides subsp. dasypodum (Klokov) Tzvelev
  • Galium rubioides subsp. rubioides
  • Galium rubioides var. articulatum (Lam.) Nyman
  • Galium rubioides var. dasycarpum Regel & Herder
  • Galium rubioides var. eriophyllum Bordz.
  • Galium ruboides Hill
  • Galium salicifolium Klokov
  • Galium verticillatum var. leiocarpum Regel & Herder
  • Galium volgense Pobed.

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.