Smooth Bedstraw

Welcome back to Ask a Naturalist, your own personal Google for information on all things natural on PEI! Over the past week, I’ve gotten dozens of questions about those cream-coloured flowers that seem to be everywhere in hayfields, pastures, and roadside ditches right now. That’s Smooth Bedstraw (aka Wild Madder, Galium mollugo [shown here with botany dogs Cuan and Dileas]).

Photo: Smooth Bedstraw (Galium mollugo) on PEI, along with a closer look at leaves, stem, and flowers (inset).

 Another common name for this plant is False Baby’s Breath, and from a distance it does resemble that unrelated staple of flower arrangements. However, Smooth Bedstraw is easily identified by its smooth, square stems, four-petalled flowers, and leaves arranged in a ring around the stem (inset photo).

As you might guess, Smooth Bedstraw is not native to the Island. It originates in Europe and Asia and was likely brought to North America as an ornamental. The first Canadian record comes from New Brunswick in 1873, and although Smooth Bedstraw had spread from Newfoundland to Ontario within 20 years of its arrival, it wasn’t recorded on PEI until the 1950s. At that time, it was known mainly from the Charlottetown and Stratford areas and was already becoming a weed in grain fields. Today, it’s common from tip to tip though most abundant in central PEI.

Smooth Bedstraw is a perennial that reproduces both vegetatively (by rhizomes) and reproductively (by seed), enabling it to form dense patches. A single plant produces thousands of seeds; in one experiment, researchers harvested 30 kilograms of the tiny seeds per hectare (about 27 pounds per acre). With an average weight of 1,600 seeds per gram, that’s about 48 million seeds per hectare!

For farmers, Smooth Bedstraw can be a headache by invading grain, hay, and pasture. Cattle and horses don’t like it, even though its nutrition is similar to forage crops. My sheep used to love it both on pasture and in hay, but the long, tangly stems were a pain to cut and bale. The dense foliage, extensive root system, and large seed bank of this perennial can make it a challenge to control.

On the (admittedly minor) upside, Smooth Bedstraw is edible and has a history of use in traditional medicine. Young leaves and stems can be eaten raw or cooked, though they become tough and bitter as the plant ages. Flowers have a mild vanilla-like aroma and flavour thanks to the presence of coumarins, the same chemicals that give Sweetgrass its characteristic scent.

And Smooth Bedstraw is a member of the Coffee Family (Rubiaceae) with seeds that do contain some caffeine. They can be eaten raw, or roasted and ground as a coffee substitute, but don’t expect the same jolt as you get from commercial beans. Modern science has confirmed a host of other bioactive compounds within Smooth Bedstraw, and the plant is a subject of ongoing pharmaceutical research.

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