Yellow Bedstraw

Galium verum

COMMON NAMES

• Cheese Rennet
• Lady's Bedstraw
• Maid's-hair
• Our-Lady's-bedstraw
• Yellow Bedstraw

Yellow bedstraw - a perennial herb growing up to 3 feet tall. Rough-surfaced, narrowly lance-shaped leaves, about 1 inch long, are borne in whorls of four to eight around the stem nodes and are covered with soft hairs on the underside. Numerous tiny bright yellow flowers of yellow bedstraw (June-August) occur in dense elongated clusters.

The Virgin Mary prepared the manger in Bethlehem with yellow bedstraw according to legend, and perhaps she did, because this herb's honey-scented flowers and hay-scented dried foliage were traditionally used as mattress stuffing. The plant's chief employment, going back to early Greece, was in cheese making. A strong decoction, or extract, of the leaves and stem acts as a curdling agent. Some herbals still suggest making cheese by this method, but bedstraw is no longer employed in the commercial product. Yellow bedstraw furnished two dyes: a red one from the roots and a yellow one from the flowers. During the reign of Henry VII (1485-1509) in England the ladies of the court used the yellow dye to tint their hair blond-hence the common name maid's-hair. Dairymen in Cheshire, England, used the yellow dye to color cheese.

The red root extract suggested to herbalists of long ago that the plant might be useful for halting bleeding. In Elizabethan England herbal healers also recommended a decoction of yellow bedstraw as a soothing foot bath.

PARTS USED

Aerial parts.

USES

A slightly bitter-tasting remedy, yellow bedstraw is used mainly as a diuretic and for skin problems. Like its close relative, cleavers, yellow bedstraw is given for kidney stones, bladder stones, and other urinary conditions, including cystitis. Yellow bedstraw is occasionally used as a means to relieve chronic skin problems such as psoriasis, but, in general, cleavers is preferred as a treatment for this condition. Yellow bedstraw has had a longstanding reputation, especially in France, of being a valuable remedy for epilepsy, though it is rarely used for this purpose today.

HABITAT AND CULTIVATION

Found throughout Europe and western Asia, and naturalized in North America, yellow bedstraw thrives in dry meadows, along roadsides, and in wayside places. Yellow bedstraw is gathered when in flower in summer.

CONSTITUENTS

Yellow bedstraw contains iridoids (including asperuloside), flavonoids, anthraquinones, and alkanes.

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