Galium debile Desv.

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.

[From: Webb et al. (1988) Flora of New Zealand. Volume 4.]

Flowering: Nov.–Jan.