PEP BB woodland.straw.cleavers - Plant 100 Cleavers

What plant is this? I don’t know the name ‘cleavers’. What purpose does it serve? Why are we planting it?

Edit: found it mentioned in another thread.

Wikipedia: Cleavers

We have it here as an abundant weed. Another choice peculiar to Wheaton Labs? If I needed this in quantity I would forage for it in local hedgerows, or from around my raspberries.

I am still wondering why cleavers are being advocated so strongly in this badge?  How are other Permies utilizing them?  This is a genuine question as I have lots of them growing wild on my property and would love to discover wonderful things about a plant I haven't had much use for so far.

So you can make tea with it, stuff mattresses with it, play pranks on your friends by sticking it to them, and geese like to eat it. So I'm guessing this is done as a supplement for geese?

Interesting! It's already a weed in my hedgerow, but gets too fibrous to eat very early in the season. Good to discover more uses for it!

Here are my gloves after weeding. I gave my bunnies a basketball sized wad of cleavers and am hoping they eat the thousands of seeds that didn't cling to me rather than accidentally planting them in that spot and the next couple of days spot. What niche are they in the landscape so PEX can come up with alternatives for their location (maybe it's kudzu in south Asia but I'm just as reluctant to plant that in my yard here.)

here is great info on this edible weed and many others!

https://www.foragingtexas.com/2008/08/cleaver.html

I must have misread this one at first or maybe I was going off the note under Aurora's post above, either way I didn't plant these a foot apart so I won't submit for verification. Cleavers comes up starting in the fall where I live so I took some pictures of that when I found this BB back in October. First couple pics show a spot where I must have thrown some down in the mulch, they don't normally grow right there. While looking at a spot along a footpath where I usually harvest cleavers I managed to find some seed on a little old straw growing on a chainlink fence. Poking around I managed to find slightly over one hundred seeds that had been hanging off the ground all summer, would they germinate having dried completely? may as well find out.
I made a little furrow and put the seeds in about an inch apart and covered them with some sifted compost mix. It ended up being about 9 feet long. Time passed and they germinated, but I waited till they grew more and developed their characteristic whorls. The cotyledons look very different but have a little dimple at the tip that helps distinguish them from other weed sprouts. I wasn't paying much attention to this but noticed one day that a lot of the seedlings were getting chewed on so I went ahead and got some photos. I counted 86 total including the nibbled ones which we're mostly in the section between the 2 and 5 foot marks.
Now I wonder if anyone could enlighten me to the purpose of the 12 inches apart requirement? Do they grow bigger or better like that? Here they grow all over the place and in pretty dense carpets where they're happy. I've added another photo of a self seeded patch getting going at the end of November.
Next time I'll do the 100 and 300 at the same time. I'll have to wait till fresh seed is produced and then till next fall to plant them. I'll admit I'm not picking up on what the wood BB proves beyond the straw BB. I see germination needs to be better but it seems mostly like proof of being able to crawl farther on my hands and knees. Not to imply that I can't, I can still crawl with the best of em.