Cleavers

Look out for cleavers or sticky-backs or robin run the hedge. They are annuals with plants sprouting from seeds each year. Tall straggly, sticky, square stems carry whorls of leaves with tiny hooks, allowing plants clamber through vegetation to reach light. Clusters of tiny starry white four-petalled flowers develop into furry green spheres with velcro-like hooks, which cleave or stick to passing animals aiding seed dispersal. Grassy margins in tillage fields reduce the spread of cleavers into crops. Called goose-grass as it was fed to geese and sop an tséaláin or wispy strainer as it may have been used to sieve hairs out of milk – cleavers is part of our native Irish biodiversity.