Stick it to me

Now brushed aside as a weed with an irritating propensity for attaching itself to clothing, goosegrass was once welcomed with open arms, thanks to its medicinal properties, finds Ian Morton

- Ian Morton

GOOSEGRASS is widely regarded as the stickiest nuisance in the garden. Although it owes its most common name to geese, which have a liking for it, dozens of its folk names mark its stickiness-sticky willy, sticky molly, sticky jack and sticky bob, among others. Local names, such as hayriffe and hedgeriffe, are said to have originated from the AngloSaxon word for robber or tax-gatherer, because the plant stole wool from passing sheep.

Belying both moniker and appearance, however, goosegrass doesn't actually stick. Instead, its square stems and the undersides of its leaves are coated with tiny hooked hairs, with which it fastens itself to drape over whatever herbage is to hand, enveloping and subduing smaller plants and climbing more than a yard up stouter foliage in search of sunlight. Nicholas Culpepper's 1652 herbal treatise described its stems as 'so weak that unless it be sustained by the hedges, or other things near which it groweth, it will lie down on the ground'. Fast-growing and determinedly verdant in spring, it snatches at animals and clothes, so much so that a folk name, everlasting friendship, offered a sardonic comment on its persistence, with another, sweethearts, celebrating its entwining nature.

Even the ancient Greeks remarked on the plant's habit of embracing human clothing they called it philanthropon. Yet, Galium aparine, native to wide areas of Europe, North Africa and Asia and subsequently naturalised from the Americas to Australasia, has shown its love to people in more useful ways, helping country folk for many centuries. In the classical era, it was used by shepherds to strain hairs out of the milk of sheep and goats and its tiny white summer flowers were added to milk in order to curdle it to make cheese. The Greek botanist Dioscorides named it Galium (from