Galium murale
Small herb, often mat-like, probably always annual; stems glabrous or slightly scabridulous with retrorse hairs, terete to bluntly 4-angled, slender or filiform, usually < 20 cm tall. Lvs and stipules in whorls of 4-(6), ± sessile or with petiole to 1 mm long; lamina 1.5-6 × 0.5-1.8 mm, linear-lanceolate, narrow-elliptic, oblanceolate to obovate, glabrous or ± scabridulous above and on midrib below; margins antrorsely ciliate, often revolute; apex shortly awned. Fls 1-2, in axillary cymes; peduncles 0; pedicels to 1 mm long, puberulent, deflexed at fruiting; bracts leaflike. Corolla c. 0.5 mm diam., pinkish in bud, later whitish; lobes ovate, incurved and appearing ± obtuse. Mericarps 1-1.8 mm long, cylindric-oblong, often curved, puberulent, with apical tuft of hooked bristles and usually hooked bristles elsewhere, commonly 1 mericarp with some bristles, the other with few or none.
N.: Auckland (Rangitoto Id); S.: Canterbury (Weka Creek near Waipara), C. Otago (Cromwell, Roxburgh).
Mediterranean region, S.W. Europe 1946
Dry, open stony ground, dry stream beds, apparently very rare and local although undoubtedly sometimes overlooked.
FL Aug-Nov.
Specimens from Islington Bay and Rangitoto Wharf, Rangitoto Id, represent a depauperate form of G. murale, but were recorded as G. minutulum Jordan by Bangerter, E. B., Rec. Auckland Inst. Mus. 15: 30 (1978). The tiny plants at this locality grow in moss on lava rock and are dead by early summer.
