A wild plant with small yellow flowers that has a sweet-smelling dried form, historically used as stuffing for mattresses and pillows.
From bed + straw. Named directly for its historical use—people literally stuffed straw mixed with this fragrant plant into bed ticks. The plant itself is genus Galium, which has hooked hairs that help it stick together.
Bedstraw's hooked hairs are actually a botanical innovation for seed dispersal, but medieval people discovered the same hooks made it clump together perfectly—so plants that evolved to spread seeds became the perfect pillow stuffing.
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