Galium debile Desv.
slender marsh bedstraw
Perennial, drying green to brown; stems slender, weak and straggling, to c. 80 cm long, 4-angled, glabrous, or scabridulous on margins. Lvs and stipules in whorls of 4-(6), subsessile or with petioles to 1 mm long, 4-17 × 0.8-1.5 mm, narrow-linear to narrow-oblanceolate; margins flat or revolute, sometimes scabridulous; apex obtuse or subacute. Lvs of uppermost nodes often smaller. Cymes fairly dense, glabrous, 2-4 from same axis, each with c. 5-10 fls, aggregated in panicles of up to 40 fls; peduncles of variable length, to 1.5 cm long; pedicels usually 0.5-2 mm long, moderately divaricating at fruiting; bracts at base of infl. leaflike, reduced or 0 in highest orders of branches. Corolla 2.5-3.5 mm diam., white; lobes broad-ovate or ovate-oblong, 3-nerved, acute or obtuse. Mericarps c. 1 mm diam., globular, ± papillate.
N.: N. Auckland (Awanui and Bay of Islands S. to Dargaville area and Whangarei), Auckland area (Mauku), Waikato (Lower Waikato R., Lake Karapiro); S.: Canterbury (Leithfield).
S. and W. Europe 1940
Wet ground in swamps, lakesides, and still river backwaters.
FL Nov-Jan.
G. debile is closely related to the much commoner G. palustre and doubtless has often been mistaken for it. G. debile is best distinguished by the denser infl., with its more numerous fls situated on erect or suberect pedicels and peduncles, and with the main infl. branches not markedly divaricating at fruiting. From most plants of G. palustre it is also distinguished by the narrower lvs, especially the lower ones.
