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Iran Goose Grass
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Iran Goose Grass
A Native Photo: Gurcharan Singh
Common name: Iran Goose Grass
Botanical name: Galium ghilanicum    Family: Rubiaceae (Coffee family)
Synonyms: Galium chitralensis, Galium transcaucasicum

Iran Goose Grass is an annual, prostrate or rising up herb, with stem slender, older stem about 1-1.5 mm in diameter, four-edged, angles minutely aculeolate, divaricately laxly branched. It is named for the Gilan Province in Iran. Leaves are borne 4-6 in a whorl, 4-8 x 1-2.5 mm, stalkless, linear-lanceshaped, pointed-cuspidate or spiny, margin curled, midrib and margin rough, lateral nerves obscure, sometimes rough above, hairless beneath. Flowers are borne in leaf-axils, in 2-6-flowered cymes, carried on a flower-cluster-stalk 1-2 cm long. Flower-stalks are thread-like, about 3-5 mm, much enlarged and decurved in fruit. Flowers are white, minute. Fruit is white or greenish, 2-celled, about 2 mm long, 2-2.5 mm across, covered with white sunken hair-like markings, mericarps not free. Iran Goose Grass is found in S. Turkey to Central Asia and Central Himalaya.

Identification credit: Gurcharan Singh Photographed in Kashmir University Campus, Srinagar.

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