In our species, herbs with 4-angled stems and branches, with verticillate leaves and small 4-parted flowers, regular and perfect and fruit separating into 2-carpels.
Galium boreale L. Northern Bed-straw.
Smooth, erect, simple or branched, leafy, 1—2½ feet high. Leaves in 4’s, lanceolate or linear 3-nerved, obtuse or acute, 1—2½ inches long, the margins sometimes fringed with hairs. Flowers white, numerous in a terminal panicle; corolla 4-parted, ⅛ of an inch across, the lobes lanceolate, acute.
In open ground and in open woods or thickets at the lower altitudes, throughout the Rockies; flowering in July.