Galium capense Thunb.

Perennial with a sometimes slightly woody rootstock. Stems scrambling, sprawling or climbing, or ascending to erect, (80)150-900 mm long, with a few to many lateral branches; up to 4 mm in diam. and ± terete at the base, 0.5-3 mm in diam. and distinctly 4-angled in the mid-stem region; glabrous or with a few minute reversed prickles, or with ± short curled whitish hairs. Longest internodes (8)10-40 mm. Middle cauline leaves in whorls of 6-8(-10), 1-nerved, (3)5-20(23) x (0.3)0.5-2(2.5) mm, linear to narrowly lanceolate or oblanceolate, with a sometimes brownish-white mucro at the apex; surface sometimes shiny, glabrous or with small, forwardly directed prickles, or with short, straight hairs; margins often reflexed, glabrous or with a few reversed prickles. Synflorescences broadly pyramidal to ± cylindrical, paracladia ± many-flowered, flowers arranged in groups of (15)12-3(1), ultimate branches with (4)3-1 small, linear bracts or ebracteate; peduncles (1)1.5-3 mm, glabrous or scabrous, pedicels (1)1.5-4(5) mm, ± filiform, glabrous or scabrous, divaricate in fruit. Flowers 4-merous; corolla 2-4 mm in diam., rotate, (bright) yellow, creamy yellow, greenish-yellow or (rarely) whitish; lobes (much) longer than wide, acute or sometimes slightly acuminate; stamina ca. 1/4 to 3/4 of lobe length, filaments filiform; styles 1/2 to 3/4 fused. Fruits dry, glabrous, ± tuberculate or granulate, or beset with short straight or curled whitish hairs; mericarps subglobose, each ca. 1-2 mm wide.