here are many ways to be a plant. Hawthorns take their time, laying down annual growth rings before they flower, producing berries year in, year out, and surviving to a grand old age. But weeds like the goosegrass (Galium aparine) are in a hurry. They complete their ephemeral cycle of life, seed to seed, in just a few months. It is January, and already I see their seedlings shouldering aside the decaying leaves along the bottom of a bare hawthorn hedge. They will have germinated only last autumn, but their vibrant green shoots are stealing a march on their competitors whose seeds are still lying dormant in the soil. And the smell … when I pick and crush a handful of its precocious, sappy shoots, buried last week under a layer of snow, it transports me to the first warm days of April. When spring finally arrives, this weak-stemmed, well-adapted social climber – which invests little in structural strength – will be threading itself through the hedge. It claws its way upwards with row upon row of tiny hooked hairs along the edges of its stems and whorled leaves, gripping anything they touch. Then in May, the minute white, four-petalled flowers will be quickly followed by paired, hooked seeds that are carried away on fur, feathers and clothing. Every generation of children on a country walk learns how tenaciously a well-aimed handful of goosegrass will stick to coats, hats and gloves. The goosegrass is ubiquitous, a ruderal that follows humanity around, thriving wherever we cultivate soil. Which is surely why it has acquired more than 70 local, colloquial names. The commonest is cleavers, but my favourites, bearing witness to its tendency to cling, are gentleman’s tormentors (Suffolk), lover’s kisses (Somerset) and devil’s garters (Northern Ireland). Some of last summer’s withered plants remain woven into this hedge. A few remaining seeds fulfil their destiny and stick to my gloves. That may be how I originally carried it home, where it has since become a persistent, but sometimes useful, garden weed. A handful of those hooked shoots, dragged across the pond surface, magically skims off the floating carpet of duckweed that threatens to smother it every summer without disturbing the aquatic life below.