As we come to the end of June, our hedgerows and meadows are filling with yellow and white froth as members of the bedstraw family come into flower.
Bedstraws are members of the Rubiaceae family, a name which translates as red plants because the roots contain chemicals such as alizarin used to dye clothes. The family includes a huge range of plants including the coffee tree and the cinchona tree which is the source of quinine, but British species are scrambling plants that support themselves among taller plants using tiny bristles along the stem and leaf margins to grip as they climb.
The name bedstraw is self explanatory, the soft and fragrant plants were collected and stuffed into straw mattresses in times gone by. Apart from the feel and smell, the plants also have a slight insecticidal property and, along with fleabane, would protect sleepers from fleas and bed bugs. Lady’s bedstraw is particularly fragrant and is supposed to have been used by the Virgin Mary for her bed and to line the manger for the baby Jesus.
There are several bedstraw and related species in the valley. Most are in the genus Galium, a name from the Greek for milk because the plants were used as a natural rennet to curdle milk in cheese making.
They have clusters of small flowers held above the main plant that create the frothy appearance, and the leaves are in whorls along the stems. Most of the flowers have four petals and are white, but three cousins are different.
Lady’s bedstraw has upright spikes of yellow flowers thrusting up among the tall grass in the Byes meadows and Salcombe Regis churchyard. Wild madder is a much tougher plant, it has yellow five-petalled flowers and uses its very bristly leaves to scramble through many local hedgerows. Field madder is much more delicate and scrambles through the grass with pale lilac flowers on the coast path at Dunscombe.
Many of the local hedgerows are hung with swathes of white hedge bedstraw. Those along Alma Lane buzz with so many insects, butterflies, hoverflies, bees and even hummingbird hawk moths hovering on their rapidly beating wings and extending their long probosces.
Wetter meadows have the much sparser marsh bedstraw sprawling among the grass and the similar heath bedstraw can be found on Mutter’s Moor. Apart from where they live, you can tell them apart because the leaves of the heath bedstraw have a tiny spike at the tip. It isn’t called a bedstraw but sweet woodruff is the same genus and you can find it in some of our wetter woodlands.
One more member of the Galium genus is the very common scrambler with many names including cleavers, goose grass and sticky willy. I doubt if there is a hedgerow in the whole valley that does not have this plant in early spring. By June most of it is in decline and setting its fruits, and these are also covered in tiny hooks that will cling to your clothes, nature’s way of spreading the seeds.
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