Cleavers; or as Clivers. where it took me a while to find in her book's 'A MODERN HERBAL' mRS. GRIEVE TALKS FOR 2 PAGES ON..Of IT'S AROUND 3000 SPEICIES..."Many of these are of highest utility to man..."

Cleavers
Clivers 
                       HAPPY EQUNIOX AND SPRING HERE IN THE NORTHWEST HEMISPHERE


baby cleavers grew arms! 3.20.13

I celebrated the equinox with a small cup of pressed juice (about 1/10 ounce in water and some of it's maceration topically), a good book, and with a good sage smudge and a little A.H.  ...  very nice ... says Allison :D
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In her book, A Modern Herbal, Dover Publications Inc., 1971 from her work published by Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1931,
I found some interesting information.

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Some of the excerpts and my thoughts...

Her Seeds....
...best substitute for coffee....
~~~dry and simply roast on the fire~~~

Dioscorides said that the Greek shepherds used the stems to make a rough seive to strain milk and this is still done in Sweden today. Notes Mrs. Greive.

She says that the dry herb is good for insomnia.
..and the expressed juice is 3 oz. 2 times a day (but cautions it as a 'poweful' diuretic, and so diabetics should not use it), {and I would say that if you are having regular issues of digestion that you look at that first before using this} but it is used this way for scurvy, scrofula, psoriosis, and skin diseases and erruptions.
It is considered a purifier of the blood.

She says that,,, 'the roots will die red and that if eaten by birds will tinge theie bones."
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I also found some wonderful etymology of my friend, Cleavers, in her wonderful account of the herb.


Origin of it's name;

"...very old origin,.."
Anglo-Saxon
Hedge-rife

Greek
Plianthropon

Greek
aparo(to seize)

"Specific Name"
aparine  {derived from the Greek name)

Loveman {is the Anglocized version of the Greek as well)

Goosegrass is in reference to the fact that it is known to be a fond food of theirs and other animals.

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Mrs. Greive's says that, "the valuable drug, quinine,{a link with some caution info;http://www.ehow.com/about_5380885_benefits-quinine.html } , is furnished by several species of Cinchona, a Sourht American genus,"

She has much information on several varieties and looks to me as though it was widely used as such in her time and before.
The British version is of a different character, sounds like the cleaver that I know of.
Mrs. Greive says that,  '...the British representatives are all herbaceous plants, with slender, angular stems, bearing leaves aranged in whorls, or rosettes and small flowers. From the star-like arrangement of their leaves, all these British species have been assigned to the tribe Stellatae of the main order 'rubiaceae. All the members of this tribe, numbering about 300, grow in the Northern Hemisphere.
   Of the 15 British representatives of the tribe Stellatae, eleven bear the anme of Galium (the genus of the Bedstraws), and perhaps the commonest of these is the annual herb Galium aparine, familiarly known as Clivers or Goosegrass, though it rejoices in many other popular names in different parts of the country." (p.206)

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