Galium texense A. Gray, Texas bedstraw. Annual, taprooted, several–stemmed at base, spreading and sprawling over low plants, to 35 cm tall; shoots weak–stemmed, ± scabrous, bristly short–hispid and hispid.
Stems 4–sided and 4–ridged, 1 mm diameter, never woody, angles colorless, internodes 7—35 mm long, with straight hairs to 0.5 mm long.
Leaves whorled, 4 per whorl, simple and sessile, without obvious stipules; stipules 2, indistinguishable from leaves (treated here as leaves); blade ovate, to 8.5 × 4.5 mm, bright green, broadly tapered at base, entire with margins often somewhat inrolled under or wavy, acute (obtuse) at tip, midrib only conspicuous and raised on lower surface, upper surface minutely bumpy without veins.
Inflorescence cymelike lateral shoots, axillary and paired at all branchless nodes, 1 developing after the other cyme has already flowered, flowering while tightly clustered later open with increasing in axis internodes, several–flowered, bracteate, hairy like shoot; peduncle slender, stemlike, 15—25 × 0.3—0.35 mm, pubescent; bracts 2 and opposite at top of peduncle, subtending a pedicel of a terminal flower and 2 future branchlets with smaller bract, branchlets spreading to wide–divergent; bractlet subtending pedicel initially unexpanded so whorl appearing dimorphic, bract 2× bractlet; pedicels glabrous.
Flower bisexual, nearly radial, ca. 1 mm across; perianth (corolla) 4–lobed, of 1 whorl, cymbal–shaped (rotate), light yellow–green; tube ± 0.3 mm long; lobes spreading, deltate, ± 0.5 mm, inconspicuously 3–veined, with several bristles and hairs on lower surface; stamens 4, fused to corolla tube at or slightly below sinuses between lobes; filaments erect, cylindric, 0.2 mm long, whitish; anthers dorsifixed, dithecal, ca. 0.2 mm long, reddish, longitudinally dehiscent; pollen yellowish; nectary disc inconspicuous; pistil 1; ovary inferior, 2–lobed, lobes subspheric–oblong, ca. 0.4 mm but hidden by hairs, hairs not hooked at anthesis, 2–chambered, each chamber with 1 ovule; styles 2 (fused) erect, 0.4—0.45 mm long, 2–branched; stigmas spherically capitate.
Fruit schizocarp, 2–chambered forming 2 dry, 1–seeded nutlets (mericarps) with fruit wall ± fused to seed coat; mericarp hemi–ellipsoid deeply indented on inner face, 1.4—1.8 × 1.3—1.5 mm, brownish, evenly bristly with hooked prickles having swollen bases, the prickles to 0.8 mm long.
A. C. Gibson