Northern Bed-straw
Gàlium boreàle
White
Summer
Northwest, etc.
A rather attractive, smooth, perennial, with a stout, leafy stem, sometimes branching, and the leaves in fours, with three veins, the margins sometimes rough and hairy. The small flowers are white and so numerous as to be quite pretty. The fruit is small, at first bristly, but smooth when ripe. This grows in northern mountains across the continent, also in Europe and Asia, up to ten thousand feet.
VALERIAN FAMILY. Valerianaceae.
Not a large family, widely distributed, most abundant in the northern hemisphere; herbs, with opposite leaves and no stipules; flowers usually perfect, rather small, in clusters; the calyx sometimes lacking, or small, but often becoming conspicuous in fruit; corolla somewhat irregular, tube sometimes swollen or spurred at base, lobes united and spreading, usually five; stamens one to four, with slender filaments, on the corolla, alternate with its lobes; ovary inferior, with one to three cells, only one containing an ovule, the others empty; style slender; fruit dry, not splitting open, containing one seed.
There are many kinds of Valerianella, much alike, distinguished principally by their fruits.
Corn-salad
Valerianélla macrosèra (Plectritis)
Pink
Spring, summer
Northwest, Cal.
This has a juicy stem, from a few inches to over a foot tall, springing from a clump of smooth, very bright green leaves, and bearing most of the flowers at the top, in a small close cluster, with narrow purplish bracts. They are tiny, with a slightly irregular corolla, light pink, with two tiny crimson dots on each side of the lowest lobe, three dark brown anthers, and a calyx without a border. This is rather pretty, growing in long grass in damp places, but the flowers are too small to be effective.
Corn-salad—Valerianella macrosera.
Northern Bedstraw—Galium boreale.
There are many kinds of Valerian, rather tall perennials, chiefly of cool regions and some in the Andes. They are more or less bad-smelling plants, especially the root; the leaves mostly from the base and the small flowers in terminal clusters, some of them perfect, some with stamens and pistils on separate plants, some with the two sorts mixed; the calyx with from five to fifteen bristle-like teeth, curled up and inconspicuous in flower, but spread out and feathery in fruit; the corolla white or pink, more or less funnel-form, with five nearly equal lobes; the stamens three; the style sometimes with three minute lobes. The name is from the Latin, meaning "strong," in allusion to the medicinal properties.