Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Gentianales > Rubiaceae > Galium > Galium odoratum

Galium odoratum (sweetscented bedstraw)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Galium odoratum, the sweetscented bedstraw, is a flowering perennial plant in the family Rubiaceae, native to much of Europe from Spain and Ireland to Russia, as well as Western Siberia, Turkey, Iran, the Caucasus, China and Japan. It is also sparingly naturalized in scattered locations in the United States and Canada. It is widely cultivated for its flowers and its sweet-smelling foliage. It owes its sweet smell to the odiferous agent coumarin, and is sometimes used as a flavoring agent due to its chemical content.
View Wikipedia Record: Galium odoratum

Attributes

Allergen Potential [1]  Low
Edible [2]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [2]  Hermaphrodite
Lifespan [2]  Perennial
Pollinators [2]  Flies, Bees, Bats
Scent [2]  The dried foliage has the sweet scent of newly mown hay.
Structure [4]  Herb
Usage [2]  A red dye is obtained from the root; Soft-tan and grey-green dyes are obtained from the stems and leaves; A good ground-cover plant for growing on woodland edges or in the cool shade of shrubs; It spreads rapidly at the roots; It is an ideal carpeting plant for bulbs to grow through; Although the fresh plant has very little aroma, as it dries it becomes very aromatic with the scent of newly-mown grass and then retains this aroma for years; It is used in the linen cupboard to protect from moths etc.; It was also hung up in bunches in the home in order to keep the rooms cool and fragrant during the summertime;
Height [2]  6 inches (0.15 m)
Width [2]  18 inches (0.45 m)
Light Preference [3]  Mostly Shady
Soil Acidity [3]  Neutral
Soil Fertility [3]  Intermediate
Soil Moisture [3]  Moist
View Plants For A Future Record : Galium odoratum

Protected Areas

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Predators

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Leptotrochila verrucosa[7]
Neoerysiphe galii[7]
Puccinia punctata[7]
Pucciniastrum guttatum[7]

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Derived from Allergy-Free Gardening OPALS™, Thomas Leo Ogren (2000)
♦ 2Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 3ECOFACT 2a Technical Annex - Ellenberg’s indicator values for British Plants, M O Hill, J O Mountford, D B Roy & R G H Bunce (1999)
♦ 4Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 5Food eaten by the free-living European bison in Białowieża Forest, Zofia GĘBCZYŃSKA, Marek GĘBCZYŃSKI and Ewa MARTYNOWICZ, Acta Theriologica 36 (3-4), 307-313, 1991.
♦ 6Biological Records Centre Database of Insects and their Food Plants
♦ 7Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0