''Galium antarcticum'', commonly known as Antarctic bedstraw or subantarctic bedstraw, is a species of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

in the coffee family. It has a largely

subantarctic The sub-Antarctic zone is a region in the Southern Hemisphere, located immediately north of the Antarctic region. This translates roughly to a latitude of between 46° and 60° south of the Equator. The subantarctic region includes many islands ...

range.

Distribution and habitat

It is found in southern

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

and southern

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

, as well in the Falklands and South Georgia and on the Crozet,

Kerguelen The Kerguelen Islands ( or ; in French commonly ' but officially ', ), also known as the Desolation Islands (' in French), are a group of islands in the sub-Antarctic constituting one of the two exposed parts of the Kerguelen Plateau, a large ...

and

Macquarie Island Macquarie Island is an island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, about halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica. Regionally part of Oceania and politically a part of Tasmania, Australia, since 1900, it became a Tasmanian State Reserve in 197 ...

s. It occurs on damp ground, often on the margins of lakes and streams. The species is listed as Critically Endangered in Australia, due to its very small population on the Australian territory of Macquarie Island.

Description

Antarctic bedstraw is a

perennial A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wid ...

herb that grows up to 50 mm in height. It is one of two species of vascular plants that grow in Antarctica. Its main stems are weak, prostrate and leafless, rooting at the nodes; the young stems are erect, sparsely branched,

smooth Smooth may refer to: Mathematics * Smooth function, a function that is infinitely differentiable; used in calculus and topology * Smooth manifold, a differentiable manifold for which all the transition maps are smooth functions * Smooth algebrai ...

and leafy. The leaves and stipules are similar, 3–4.5 mm in length, green-tinged with purple, smooth and fleshy. The flowers are solitary in upper axils; they lack a calyx and have a pinkish-buff corolla with long, yellowish stigmas. The fruits are dark brown and dry, splitting into two mericarps. The plants flower in January and fruit in February.Hooker, Joseph Dalton. 1846. Botany of the Antarctic Voyage ...Volume 1. Flora Antarctica 303 (bis).

References

External links

Photo of herbarium specimen at Missouri Botanical Garden, ''Galium antarcticum''
antarcticum Flora of Argentina Flora of southern Chile Flora of the Crozet Islands Flora of the Falkland Islands Flora of the Kerguelen Islands Flora of Macquarie Island Flora of South Georgia Island Plants described in 1846 Taxa named by Joseph Dalton Hooker {{galium-stub