Cleavers
Clivers, goosegrass, barweed, hedgeheriff, hayriffe, grip grass, catchweed, scratweed, mutton chops, robin-run-in-the-grass, loveman, goosebill, everlasting friendship; Greek aparine, philanthropon; Ojibwe sakate’bwi, ‘stickers’; Galium aparine L.
- Known today as
- Galium aparine, an annual hedgerow weed of the madder family, Rubiaceae, common throughout Europe and in North America. Its square stems and its whorls of six or eight narrow leaves are covered with little hooked bristles that point backwards, so that it climbs through the hedge “in a ladder-like manner,” Grieve writes, and its small round bristly seeds cling to any animal that brushes them. The whole plant, root excepted, gathered as it comes into flower, is the drug.
- Kind
- Plant, in 2 older authorities
- Constituents
- galitannic acid, citric acid, rubichloric acid, and 1 more
- Earliest authority here
- Dioscorides, De materia medica (1st century), book 3 (c. AD 40–90)
- In other databases
- Plants of the World Online · GBIF · Wikidata
Caution. None of the sources read for this entry reports poisoning. Grieve, calling it a rather powerful diuretic, advised that the juice not be given where there was a tendency to diabetes.
Cleavers: what was it used for?
A diuretic and a spring purifier of the blood. Grieve records it as still used in country districts as a purifier of the blood, the tops going into rural “spring drinks,” and by herbalists as an alterative for skin diseases and eruptions and as a diuretic in dropsy and stone; a tea of it was said to bring quiet sleep, and a wash of it to help sunburn and freckles. Smith found the Pillager Ojibwe making a tea of the whole plant “for a diuretic, in kidney trouble, gravel, stoppage of urine, and allied ailments.”
Cleavers: what does modern science say?
No European monograph covers it. The searches of Europe PMC made for this entry found laboratory studies of its extracts but no clinical trial in people.
Pharmacognosy & Toxicology
- Constituents
- galitannic acida variety of tannic acid
- citric acid
- rubichloric acida peculiar acid
- starch ChEMBL
- Mechanism
- Not established in the sources read for this entry.
- Standing
- There is no European monograph, and no clinical trial of it was found for this entry.
- Grieve, M. A Modern Herbal, “Clivers.” As published on botanical.com. Read in full · the text read
Constituent names open the compound’s record at PubChem, and “ChEMBL” beside a name opens its record at ChEMBL, the European Bioinformatics Institute’s database of bioactive molecules. Where a mechanism line was checked against ChEMBL (ChEMBL 37, read 1 October 2026), the check is shown with the measured value and its source paper, or says plainly that nothing has been measured. Doses are as the references give them, for description only; this is not medical advice. Each source carries the result of its check against Crossref, PubMed, or the authority’s page: see Verification.
Cleavers: what lore surrounds it?
Most of its names come from its clinging, Grieve explains: aparine from a Greek word meaning to seize, philanthropon, which the Greeks gave it for the same habit, and loveman an Englishing of that; hedge-rife, an old name meaning a tax-gatherer or robber, from its way of plucking the sheep as they pass the hedge. In the fourteenth century it was called Tonguebleed, from its roughness. Linnaeus reported Swedish country people still straining milk through its stems, as Dioscorides’s shepherds had, and its roasted seeds were drunk in Sweden as a substitute for coffee. Its roots dye red, and Grieve adds that they tinge the bones of birds that eat them.
Cleavers: what did the older authorities say?
- Dioscorides, De materia medica (1st century), book 3
- Dioscorides describes its rough square branches and the leaves set round them in circles, notes that the herb sticks to clothes and that shepherds used it as a strainer to take the hairs out of milk, and gives its juice in wine for the bites of spiders and snakes, its juice in the ear for earache, and the herb with lard for glandular swellings. He records its other Greek names, among them philanthropum.
- Culpeper, The Complete Herbal (1653)
- Culpeper puts it under the Moon, and repeats the old use against adders: the juice and seed taken in wine help those bitten “by preserving the heart from the venom.” He adds that “it is familiarly taken in broth to keep them lean and lank, that are apt to grow fat,” and that the juice or the bruised leaves laid on a bleeding wound stay the bleeding.
Sources
- Grieve, M. A Modern Herbal, “Clivers.” As published on botanical.com. Read in full · the text read
- Dioscorides. De materia medica, 3-104, in the modern English version of T. A. Osbaldeston and R. P. A. Wood (Johannesburg: Ibidis, 2000), after Goodyer’s translation of 1655. Internet Archive. Read in part · the text read
- Culpeper, N. The Complete Herbal, “CLEAVERS.” Project Gutenberg, 49513. Read in part · the text read
- Smith, H. H. (1932). Ethnobotany of the Ojibwe Indians, Goose Grass. Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee 4. Project Gutenberg, 49527. Read in part · the text read
Verification
- Checked
- October 1, 2026
- Passes
- Every sentence read against its sources, in the pass over the remaining 343 entries
- The Standing line checked against the authority it names (EMA, WHO, FDA, CITES, Commission E)
- Every dated or regulatory claim checked by category across the database
- Sources
- 4 cited: 1 read in full, 3 read in part.
- Corrections
- None were needed.
What was checked, how, and what was found is set out on the Verification page. A checked source is one whose record was found; it does not make the entry medical advice.
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Cite This Entry
Version 1 · first published October 17, 2026
- Chicago
“Cleavers.” In Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1. The Thinking Press, 2026–. Last modified October 17, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/cleavers.
- MLA
“Cleavers.” Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema, version 1, The Thinking Press, 17 Oct. 2026, thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/cleavers. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.
- APA
Cleavers. (2026, October 17). In B. C. P. Statema (Ed.), Materia medica (Version 1). The Thinking Press. Retrieved October 17, 2026, from https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/cleavers
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See Also
Sharing citric acid, starch
Physalis · Drosera rotundifolia · Malva sylvestris · Barley water · Curcuma zedoaria
Also in Dioscorides
Coltsfoot in Dioscorides · Cherry stalks in Dioscorides · Comfrey in Dioscorides · Chaste tree in Dioscorides · everything Dioscorides names →
Also in Nicholas Culpeper
Couch grass in Nicholas Culpeper · Chicory in Nicholas Culpeper · Cowslip in Nicholas Culpeper · Chickweed in Nicholas Culpeper · everything Nicholas Culpeper names →
Drawing on the same sources: Grieve, Culpeper, Smith
Clove · Clary, garden · Colocynth · Cochia pills · Cinnamon · Corn silk · Cattail · Cranberry · the bibliography →
Nearby in the alphabet
Civet (The glandular secretion of the civet cat) · Cochineal (a parasite of the prickly-pear cactus of Mexico and South America) · Citron (the large thick-rinded ancestor of the lemon) · Coffee (The roasted seeds of Coffea arabica) · Cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans)
Historical description, not medical advice.
