Galium
(Galion, the old Greek name used by Dioscordes, from gala, milk; the flowers of one of the species having been used to curdle milk). Bedstraw. ORD. Rubiaceoe. An extensive genus of annual or perennial herbs, spread over the whole of the temperate regions of the New, as well as of the Old World, especially abundant in Europe and Northern Asia, penetrating also into the tropics, but there chiefly confined to mountainous districts. The species number 150, and are, for the most part, uninteresting weeds; the following, however, may be employed to cover rockwork; maritinum, purpureum, rubrum, and uliginosum. Flowers white, yellow, or (in exotic species) red, in axillary or terminal trichotomous cymes or panicles, sometimes reduced to small clusters; calyx completely combined with the ovary; corolla rotate, the tube scarcely perceptible, with four spreading lobes. The annuals require to be sown in any ordinary border, in March; the perennials should be divided at the same time. The genus is represented in the British flora by eleven species, the flowers of one of which-the golden-yellow-flowered Lady's bedstraw, G. verum--are used in some districts to curdle milk, hence one of its popular names, Cheese Rennet.