When I was first clearing my property for a garden, my
daughter was helping me pull up by the hand the most persistent weeds, namely
garlic mustard and a nasty week that left her bare legs (for it was summer and
she was wearing shorts) with hundreds of little scratches, as if from tiny
razors. From my book of weeds I identified the offending plant as rough
bedstraw. While the garlic mustard has
been long gone, the rough bedstraw has persisted. I learned to keep my legs
covered, but while the cobwebby growth whicle lies like a lacy curtain over
some of my shady ground cover is easy to pull up, it leaves my socks, gloves
and sleeves covered with little spiny seeds that take some time to remove after
the day’s work in the garden.
This annoying week goes by many names: Cleavers,
catchweed-bedstraw, goose grass, scratchgrass, grip-grass, sticky Willie, rough
bedstraw, and, in Latin: Glium aparine and Rubiaceae.
In recent month I have been listening to Books on Tape—the
Brother Gadfael series, where the 12th century monk Brother Gadfael,
who is responsible for the monastery’s herb garde and the preparation of
healing medicines is described as using Cleavers to prepare a healing potion
for open wonds.
I couldn’t believe it! That sticky, scratchy weed for healing?
So I looked it up.
Well, yes.
According to Anna Kruger in An Illustrated Guide to Herbs, their medicine and magic, “Cleavers
has been used in herbal medicines for centuries, on account of the tonic,
blood-purifying and diuretic properties of the fresh plant. In spring, after a
starchy winter diet, the fresh green tops were made for a cleansing drink. An
infusion of cleavers is traditional remedy for skin eruptions, while its
diuretic properties are helpful for urinary problems. Modern herbalists value
cleavers’ tonic effect on the lymphatic system. This encourages the elimination
of toxins and explains the cleansing reputation of the herb.”
The seeds were “once dried and roasted as a coffee
substitute and, according to Linneaus, Swedish farmers made the stems into a
crude sieve for straining a milk?”
“Cosmetically, a cleavers’ rinse may help to clear up
dandruff.” (pp.64-5)
According to Culpeper’s
Complete Herbal, Cleavers “is under the dominion of the moon. The juice
of the herb and the seed together taken in wine, helpeth those bitten with an
adder, by preserving the heart form the venom. It is familiarly taken in broth
to keep them lean and land that are apt to grow fat. The distilled water drunk
twice a day helpeth the yellow jaundice; and the decoction of the herb, in
experience, is found to do the same, and stayeth lexes and bloody fluxes. The
juice of the leaves…bruised and applied to any bleeding wound, stayeth the
bleeding. The juice also is very good to close up the lips of green wounds, and
the powder of the dried herb…doth the same and likewise helpeth old ulcers.
Being boiled in hog’s grease, it helpeth all sorts of hard swellings or kernels
in the throat, being anointed therewith. The juice dropped into the ears taketh
away the pain of them.”
In my book, Weeds
of the Northeast (p. 302) it says that rough bedstraw is “found near
woodlands and tickets and in shaded mulched beds. It thrives in moist areas,
usually in the shade, and prefers nutrient riche, high organic soils.” So
perhaps as a gardener who composts and mulches I should consider its abundance
in my garden as a compliment!
Source of image Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galium_aparine
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