_Madder Family_
In our species, herbs with 4-angled stems and branches, with
verticillate leaves and small 4-parted flowers, regular and perfect and
fruit separating into 2-carpels.
[Sidenote: =Galium boreale= L. _Northern Bed-straw._]
Smooth, erect, simple or branched, leafy, 1—2½ feet high. Leaves in
4’s, lanceolate or linear 3-nerved, obtuse or acute, 1—2½ inches long,
the margins sometimes fringed with hairs. Flowers white, numerous in
a terminal panicle; corolla 4-parted, ⅛ of an inch across, the lobes
lanceolate, acute.
In open ground and in open woods or thickets at the lower altitudes,
throughout the Rockies; flowering in July.