clivers

An annual plant with stems covered in backward-curving prickles, found widely across North America, Europe, and Asia; also known as cleavers or goosegrass.

• 🇩🇪Einjährige Pflanze mit gebogenen Stacheln besetzten Stängeln, verbreitet in Nordamerika, Europa und Asien.

1. An annual plant with curved prickles on the stem, widespread across the Northern Hemisphere. C2 formal scientific

   A scrambling, herbaceous annual of the Rubiaceae family (Galium aparine), characterised by its square, brittle stems densely covered with tiny, hooked bristles that enable it to cling to clothing, fur, and other plants. It bears whorls of narrow, lance-shaped leaves and produces small, white, star-shaped flowers followed by burr-like fruits. Commonly regarded as a persistent weed of cultivated ground, hedgerows, and waste places in North America, Europe, and Asia; historically used in herbal medicine as a diuretic and lymphatic cleanser.

   • The children returned from the field with clivers stuck all over their sweaters and trousers.
   • Farmers often struggle to eradicate clivers from cereal crops because it tangles with the harvest machinery.
   • Herbalists brew a cleansing tea from the dried aerial parts of clivers collected in early summer.
   • The stems of clivers are so rough with tiny barbs that they feel like sandpaper.
   • Clivers can smother young vegetable seedlings if it is not hoed out early in the growing season.

   🇩🇪Einjährige Pflanze mit gebogenen Stacheln am Stängel, in der nördlichen Hemisphäre weit verbreitet.

   Synonyme: bedstrawcatchweed

• clivers plural form
• clivers' possessive plural form
• clivers's possessive singular form