174 The Romance of Wild Flowers 
considerable masses of white flowers. There are 
rough irregularities of the stem-angles and the 
margins of the leaves. In the Field Bedstraw (G. 
tricorne) these roughnesses are developed into hooked 
prickles, which enable the plant to climb up the stems 
of the corn, and its roughish (but not hook-covered) 
fruits, which ripen about the same time as the corn, 
get efficiently distributed with it, so that the aid of 
bird and beast is unnecessary. 
Goosegrass, or Cleavers (G. aparine), has reached a 
higher stage of development as a climber: its stems 
and leaves are extremely well furnished with the flinty 
hooks which enable its five-feet lengths of stem to 
scramble up and form green curtains over the hedges. 
But as this species cannot well enlist man’s aid in 
dispersing its seeds, as the Field Bedstraw does, it 
covers its fruits also with the flinty hooks which 
catch readily and surely in fur or feather, and in any 
human garments. Scarcely a bird can alight upon 
that part of the hedge without taking a few away; 
and no mammal, whether mouse, rat, rabbit, stoat, 
fox, sheep, ox, or horse, can come to the hedge without 
picking up a number which will only be dislodged 
upon their pushing through or rubbing against 
another hedge. 
