Also known as goose grass, clivers and sticky-willy, this common roadside plant clambers all over hedges and other plants in a green mass in high summer. It sends up bright green shoots from January onwards, being one of the first plants to sprout.
Cleavers is a wonderfully gentle lymphatic cleanser and a fantastic spring tonic, helping clean up our system after winter. It soothes irritated membranes of the urinary tract and promotes urine flow, and is useful for many mouth and throat problems.
Rubiaceae Bedstraw family
Description: A clambering annual covered in small hooks that help it ‘cleave’ to anything it touches. Can be several metres high. Leaves are in whorls; small white flowers are followed by pairs of small ball-like fruit.
Habitat: Hedgerows, farmland, stream banks and gardens.
Distribution: Common all over the British Isles. Native to Eurasia and North America; widespread but introduced in the southern hemisphere.
Related species: Two other species, corn cleavers (G. tricornutum) and false cleavers (G. spurium), are very similar but not widespread. The genus Galium also includes the bedstraws. Lady’s bedstraw (G. verum) and hedge bedstraw (G. album) can be used interchangeably with cleavers as medicinal herbs.
Parts used: Above-ground parts, gathered in handfuls from early spring until the plants flower in the summer.
Cleavers is the earliest of the traditional spring tonic herbs to sprout, appearing even before the end of the year in sheltered spots under hedges. By February it is making dense mats of intensely green whorled leaves. This is the time to harvest it to eat in salads, before it becomes tough and hairy. Pick the shoots and chop them finely. Nicholas Culpeper (1653) nicely summarises the traditional view:
It is a good remedy in the Spring, eaten (being first chopped small, and boiled well) in water-gruel, to cleanse the blood, and strengthen the liver, thereby to keep the body in health, and fitting it for that change of season that is coming.
By summer, cleavers romps all over the place, and its tiny white four-petalled flowers appear. At this stage, it will stick to anything, sometimes growing above head height. It can be used to make a quick makeshift collecting basket by twining it around on itself. As John Parkinson (1640) noted:
the herbe serveth well the Country people in stead of a strainer, to cleare their milke from strawes, haires, or any other thing that falleth into it.
To understand how cleavers works in the body, you need to know a little about the lymphatic system. When our arteries carry oxygenated blood out to the far reaches of the body, the blood vessels branch smaller and smaller until only one red blood cell at a time can pass through.
These tiny blood vessels are the capillaries. Here, the red blood cells give up their oxygen and nutrients to the clear liquid around them, which then crosses the capillary walls into the cells.
The cells take the oxygen and nutrients, and in return give up their metabolic waste products to the fluid. This fluid doesn’t go back into the blood vessels, but is collected by the lymphatic vessels, which are like a white bloodstream flowing back through the body towards the heart in parallel with the veins.
White blood cells in the lymphatic fluid start cleaning it up, and it passes through lymph nodes where the process continues. When it is all clean, the fluid rejoins the bloodstream at the point where the large vein enters the heart. Here it is pumped out to the lungs and the cycle begins again. If the lymph is clean and flowing well, the body will be healthy.
Use cleavers for…
Herbally, cleavers promotes the lymphatic flow and helps rid the lymphatic system of metabolic waste. In effect, it is like a pipe cleaner for our lymph vessels. This quality makes it a useful remedy for swollen glands, tonsillitis, adenoid problems and earache. Because of its effect on the lymph, cleavers enjoys a reputation for helping to shrink tumours, both benign and cancerous, and for removing nodular growths on the skin.
A spring tonic in the raw: cleavers in foreground, ramsons flowering across the road on left. Near Barnard Castle, Co. Durham
Austrian herbalist Maria Treben (1980) favoured cleavers tea as a drink and gargle to treat cancers of the tongue and throat. It is good too for other problems of the tongue, throat and neck, and is used by herbalists for goitre, other thyroid issues and swollen glands.
Because it promotes the flow of urine, and cools and soothes, cleavers is used to reduce heat and irritation of the urinary tract. It relieves the scalding pain on urination associated with cystitis, and is a remedy for chronic recurrent bouts of urethritis, for kidney inflammation, irritable bladder and prostatitis.
It is also effective in clearing grit, gravel or calcium deposits in the urinary tract. As a bonus, because cleavers is so good at cleaning the body internally, it also helps clear and nourish the skin.
Cleavers combines well with other familiar ‘weeds’ – curly dock, nettle, dandelion and burdock – as in our ‘garden weed tincture’ recipe. This tincture is an effective cleansing tonic for the whole body.
Cleavers loses some of its effectiveness when dried, and works best fresh. Picking your own in the spring and using it daily while in season is a great way to give yourself a gentle annual spring-cleanse. Try chopping a little young cleavers to mix in with salads or add to soups. The juice can be blended with fruit smoothies.
Cleavers poultice
The fresh, bruised plant is an excellent poultice for nettle rash, sores, blisters, burns or any hot inflammation of the skin. Just pick a handful of cleavers, crush it with a mortar and pestle, and apply to the skin.
Cleavers juice
Taking the fresh juice is the best way to use cleavers from early spring until summer. If you don’t have a juicer, don’t worry – just chop up a handful of fresh cleavers, put it in a jelly bag and squeeze out the juice.
Dose: Take 1 teaspoonful two or three times a day.
Cleavers succus
If you want to preserve your cleavers juice for use in the autumn and winter, the best way is to mix it with glycerine or honey to make a simple preparation called a succus. This is done as follows:
Measure your fresh cleavers juice, and add an equal amount of vegetable glycerine or runny honey. Mix well, then bottle and label. It tastes just like the smell of fresh-mown grass.
Dose: Take 1 to 2 teaspoonfuls two or three times a day.
Cleavers ointment
Stir the fresh juice into anhydrous lanolin until it is soft and a pale green colour. Use a fork for this. It’s hard work at first, but gets easier as the lanolin starts to absorb the juice. This is a particularly good application for dry, cracked or chapped skin.
Garden weed tincture
Here’s a great way to turn a morning’s weeding into something really useful – a whole-body tonic to improve your health generally.
Weed out and wash:
Cleavers – best collected before they set seed
Dandelion plants – root, leaves and all
Nettle tops (before they flower) and nettle root
Curled dock roots
Burdock roots
Chop the herbs and put them in a large, wide-mouthed jar, packing them in fairly tightly. Pour on enough vodka to cover them, and leave for a month, shaking occasionally. Strain off. If you have a fruit press, use it to get the maximum liquid out of the roots; otherwise just use muscle power to squeeze it out using a jelly bag. Bottle and label.
Dose: 1 teaspoonful twice a day.
Coltsfoot