Galium kinuta

Japanese name: キヌタソウ （砧草）
Scientific name: Galium kinuta

[Overview]
A perennial 30–60 cm tall, found at slightly dry forest edges and in grasslands from hills to mountains.
The underground stem is somewhat woody and hard, and produces thick, yellowish red, fibrous roots.
The stem is 4-ridged, erect, and hairless, and often branches from the lower leaf axils.
The leaves are simple, in whorls of 4, ovate-lanceolate to ovate, 2–8 cm long and 0.8–2.5 cm wide, with 3 conspicuous veins and a long, tail-like pointed tip.
Short upward-pointing hairs grow on the leaf margin and veins.
There is no petiole.
Of the leaves in a whorl, the true leaves are the 2 that are opposite; the others are stipules of the same shape.
Paniculate cymes from the stem tip and upper leaf axils bear many flowers.
The flowers are about 3 mm across and white, with a 4-lobed corolla.
The fruit is a spherical, hairless schizocarp.

[Notes]
The Japanese name is said to come from the fruit's resemblance to a kinuta (a tool for beating cloth to soften it).

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