Galium microlobum
I.Thomps.Ascending to prostrate annual, rarely perennial; stems slender, mostly 6–25 cm long, with sparsely hairy and scabrous. Leaves and stipules subsessile, c. equal below inflorescences, stipules decreasing in length upwards to one third to two thirds leaf length, in whorls of 4, oblanceolate, narrow-elliptic, narrow-lanceolate or narrow-oblong-elliptic, 1–10 mm long, 0.5–2 mm wide, acute, upper surface with clear antrorse prickles, abaxial surface glabrous or with few clear prickles on midrib; margins recurved to revolute, with antrorse prickles. Inflorescences 1–3-flowered, shorter than whorl; peduncles to 1 mm long; pedicels to 1 mm long. Corolla 0.8–1.0 mm diam., greenish-cream abaxially, usually intensely purplish-red abaxially. Fruit depressed-globose, 0.8–1 mm diam.; mericarps reniform, touching one another, smooth or obscurely rugose, dark-brown or dark-purple, glabrous. Flowers late winter–spring.
LoM, VRiv, NIS. Also SA, NSW. In Victoria around rocky outcrops in woodland at Mt Hope near Kerang in the north and the Warby Range in the north-east.
The flowers and mericarps of this species are the smallest of the Australian native Galium species (Thompson 2009).
