Americanized Cleavers Gardens for Ground Covers and Natural Barriers

Summary: Americanized cleavers gardens employ bristly cleavers, fringed skunk vine and thin-haired false cleavers as ground covers and as natural barriers.

cleavers (Galium aparine), growing wild in back garden, British Isles: Peter O'Connors (anemoneprojectors), CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr

Americanized cleavers gardens adapt to abandoned, barren, compacted, disturbed, stressed lots and roadsides and thereby adjust ground reflection loss rates downward even though their aggressive habits anger backyard gardeners and canola farmers.

The bristled, trailing stems and the similar-sized seeds of the annual herb or winter annual become entangled in canola, edibles and ornamentals and bring down production. Land invasions, piggyback rides and seed production condemn the Central European and west Asian native herb to weed status in Canada and in the United States. Legislation by the Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan provincial governments, by the Canadian federal government and by the New York state government decries cleavers' weediness.

Alabama and Florida state legislation and Canadian federal and Saskatchewan provincial legislation respectively exclude cleavers' weedy relatives, Asia's skunk vines and Africa's and Eurasia's false cleavers.

Oval, 0.39- to 1.18-inch- (10- to 30-millimeter-) long, 0.19- to 0.55-inch- (5- to 14-millimeter-) wide cotyledons with notched tips function as embryonic leaves during seedling stages.

The cotyledons grow atop brown- or purple-splotched stems into four-whorled, spine-tipped leaves that get dissolved soil nutrients from 1.97- to 2.36-inch- (5- to 6-centimeter-) long roots. Mature cleavers have backward-pointing, bristly hairs atop corners and nodes of their 11.81- to 59.06-inch- (30- to 150-centimeter-) long stems and branched, numerous, shallow, short roots. The square, trailing, weak stems include whorls of six to eight 0.39- to 3.15-inch- (1- to 8-centimeter-) long, 0.08- to 0.12-inch- (2- to 3-millimeter-) wide leaves.

The bristly hairs on the foliar margins and midrib of one-veined, stalkless leaves and on stem corners and nodes jab surrounding vegetation in Americanized cleavers gardens.

Inflorescences, called cymes, keep their oldest flowers at the tips of clustered floral groups of three to nine in the axil unions of leaves and stems.

Perfect, regular flowers, each 0.08 inch (2 millimeters) across, lend green-white March through April bloom times to Americanized cleavers gardens within eight weeks of seed germination. The flowers each manage unassuming presences and female and male parts, with one pistil, four green minute sepals and four stamens on four green-white united petals. Cleavers, also called catchweed, goosegrass, grip grass, scratch grass, spring cleavers, stickywilly, valiant's cleavers and white hedge, nudge from flowering into fruiting stages with small nuts.

Hooked bristles occur on every 0.12- to 0.16-inch- (3- to 4-millimeter-) long nutlet in the paired fruits offered by cleavers, scientifically called Galium aparine (milk-curdling cleavers).

Cleavers each produce optimally 400 gray-brown, round seeds 0.07 to 0.12 inches (1.9 to 3 millimeters) in diameter and less than 0.02 inch (0.6 millimeter) long.

Six-year viable seed germination quickens at 0.32- to 0.59-inch- (8- to 15-millimeter) depths but quits at 1.58-plus-inch- (4-plus-centimeter) depths and 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius). Cold, germination and heat intolerances reduce the otherwise aggressive seed production by cleavers, scientifically described by Råsholt-born Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778). They serve as similar controls over seedy, weedy tendencies in fellow, related members of the Rubiaceae family of bedstraw and madder herbs, shrubs, trees and vines.

Americanized cleavers gardens tout cleavers, false cleavers and skunk vines as natural barriers that tuck into North American landscapes Rubiaceae family-related cinchona, coffee trees and gardenias.

Cleavers, also known as goosegrass, is designed for easily creeping atop other plants on the forest floor; southeastern Loch of Clunie, North East Scotland: Mike Pennington/geograph.org.uk, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

cleavers, growing wild in back garden, British Isles: Peter O'Connors (anemoneprojectors), CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/anemoneprojectors/4032460100/

Cleavers, also known as goosegrass, is designed for easily creeping atop other plants on the forest floor; southeastern Loch of Clunie, North East Scotland: Mike Pennington/geograph.org.uk, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Goosegrass_(Galium_aparine),_Loch_Clunie_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1505032.jpg

For further information:

Dickinson, Richard; and Royer, France. 2014. Weeds of North America. Chicago IL; London, England: The University of Chicago Press.

"Galium aparine L." Tropicos® > Name Search.
Available @ http://www.tropicos.org/Name/27900076

Linnaeus, Carl. 1753. "19. Galium aparine." Species Plantarum, vol. I: 108. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/358127

Modzelevich, Martha. "Galium aparine, Cleavers, Clivers, Catchweed, Coachweed, Common Bedstraw, Catchweed, Goose Grass, Stickywilly, Sweet Woodruff, Hebrew: דבקה זיפנית, Arabic: بلسكاء لُزيقة." Flowers in Israel.
Available @ http://www.flowersinisrael.com/Galiumaparine_page.htm

Weakley, Alan S.; Ludwig, J. Christopher; and Townsend, John F. 2012. Flora of Virginia. Edited by Bland Crowder. Fort Worth TX: BRIT (Botanical Research Institute of Texas) Press.