Galium tricornutum Corn Cleavers

Seed heads of Galium tricornutum
©Bob Gibbons/Natural Image

This plant is rather like the common cleaver, being a rough, straggly plant with whorls of narrow leaves. The difference is the flowers, which are cream-coloured, as opposed to the white ones of the common weed.

It grows in disturbed ground, mainly in arable fields, but also on hedge-banks and sea cliffs.

The plant used to be a common weed of cereal crops, but has declined dramatically over the last 60 years owing to changing agricultural methods, and is now found in only two sites in central-southern England.

The reasons for its decline continue to threaten its future, and these are mainly the use of fertilisers and herbicides, the loss of field margins and the development of highly productive crop varieties.

Classified as Critically Endangered.